Slapped Down

By Rob Fahey Published 26 March, 2011

Gearbox' misstep with Duke's Capture the Babe mode is likely to raise hell - and rightly so.

Published as part of our sister-site GamesIndustry.biz's widely-read weekly newsletter, the GamesIndustry.biz Editorial, is a weekly dissection of an issue weighing on the minds of the people at the top of the games business. It appears on Eurogamer after it goes out to GI.biz newsletter subscribers.

Every few months, a new survey tells us in no uncertain terms exactly what the past few similar surveys have told us previously - that the majority of people playing videogames are female. Every few months, wise heads in the industry nod sagely at this revelation, and then come up with reasons to ignore or quietly disbelieve it. Zynga's games skew the figures, they say. Women are only interested in very specific genres that are outside the core markets. There's no point thinking about catering to a female audience with games like shooters or RPGs - it's just not their thing.

Such nonsensical excuses to ignore a vast segment of the audience are exasperating but unsurprising. After all, it looks okay to shareholders and investors if you're sucking at your teeth and saying, "Yes, that's a very exciting market but it's not really relevant to our business plan." It's less okay to confess that you've been catering to nothing but adolescent boys and marginally-less-adolescent adult men for 20 years and that accepting that, actually, women want to play your games too and this creates new considerations for the design process puts you so far outside your comfort zone that it's borderline panic-inducing.

For the most part, we muddle through. Sometimes, developers earnestly and with the finest of intentions end up being nothing short of patronising, ignoring the fact that the female audience for videogames actually likes videogames, rather than having bought an Xbox in the vague hope that someone might someday build shopping and make-up modes into their games. Other times, they slip up - "slip up" being the charitable interpretation - and forget that their audience doesn't consist entirely of braying misogynist hordes demanding to have their prejudices pandered to.

This week has been a bad week for examples of the latter, and as such, not a terribly good week for our medium's relationship with its female audience. In Britain, we've had the unfortunate spectacle of games retail chain Gamestation running an advertising campaign featuring the slogan "Cheaper than your girlfriend", and not even having the good grace to admit the misstep when confronted.

Nonsensical excuses to continue ignoring a vast segment of the audience are exasperating but unsurprising

This, the chain claims, is part of Gamestation's "edgy" image. The claim was made by a PR person apparently oblivious to the fact that this kind of rubbish stopped being "edgy" in media or comedy about 20 years ago, unless you're a knuckle-dragging guffawing idiot who nods along appreciatively to Richard Littlejohn columns and likes saying things like "it's PC gone mad innit", but not in reference to Steam's sales figures. I assume (or at least hope) Gamestation doesn't believe all of its customers fit this stereotype.

Gamestation's advertisement, at least, has the sense of an isolated mistake, even if it's compounded by failure to acknowledge the problem (and a truly forehead-slap inducing reference to the "traditional male core gamer" as its customer base - a customer base which, on this showing, it has absolutely no interest in expanding). On the other side of the pond, however, we've seen a rather more ugly and much more vociferously defended example of sexism raising its head, from an unlikely source.

Gearbox is a developer for which I have an immense amount of affection. I've only visited their offices in Dallas once, but they were hospitable, pleasant and obviously deeply passionate about what they were doing. Company boss Randy Pitchford is, quite honestly, one of the nicest men in an industry which is (often to the surprise of the mainstream media) stuffed to the gills with softly spoken, intelligent, pleasant people.

All of which makes it all the more mind-boggling that the company's forthcoming Duke Nukem Forever title is set to feature a multiplayer mode called "Capture the Babe", a variant on Capture the Flag in which you'll carry off a squirming young woman who, occasionally on your point-scoring trip back to base, will "freak out", requiring the administration of a slap on the buttocks to calm her down.

Look, I know Duke Nukem's history. I was a teenager when it came out, and I played it and loved it, and even now his various off-colour remarks and the pauses in the carnage to quickly offer some cash to a nearby stripper raise a smile. It's unquestionably the product of a slightly dafter and less intelligent time, but equally, it's easy to class under the heading of "mostly harmless". I don't want to be all right-on over this issue, but the extent of the discomfort I feel at what Gearbox has implemented here is immense.

The defence, already mooted very publicly by hugely popular webcomic and arbitrator of gaming taste Penny-Arcade, is that hey - in Call of Duty you slaughter thousands, so how is slapping a girl to calm her down in Duke Nukem Forever "offensive"?

It's a persuasive argument. It's also stupid and disingenuous. The slaughter of thousands by an improbable super-soldier is pretty blatantly within the realms of utter fantasy. Slapping women? That's something which, sadly, happens every day in countless households around the world. There's no funny, goofy way to give a player - playing as an all-American hero - a button which slaps a woman to calm her down, because there's no way to do it without reinforcing the basic and sadly still widely held view that this is an acceptable thing to do.

We, meaning the media and gamers on the whole, defend this medium from allegations of promoting violence because we know that the distinguishing line between fantasy and reality is clear to all but an extraordinarily tiny minority of people - and those people have psychological and social problems that are bluntly unrelated to their videogame consumption. What Penny-Arcade and other defenders of Gearbox' woman-slapping action button have done is to confuse the false allegation of inspiring violent behaviour with the altogether more likely and insidious action of reinforcing stereotypes and prejudices.

The vast, vast majority of gamers are not murderers. However, a few evenings on Xbox Live or World of Warcraft or any other online environment will show you beyond the shadow of a doubt that at the very least, a significant minority of gamers most certainly are loud-mouthed misogynists. The anecdotal experience of female core gamer friends, many of whom have had to hide their gender in order to have good experiences on Xbox Live or in MMORPGs, backs this up entirely.

Sexism remains part and parcel of interactive entertainment, because by and large the core games industry is still a boys' treehouse to which girls are only grudgingly invited

Should Gearbox, a respected and well-liked company in its field, be debasing itself by pandering to those people? Sure, they're the audience - at least, they're part of the audience - but even commercially, will the number of thick-browed cretins who decide to buy Duke Nukem Forever because you can slap women really outnumber the number of people who are utterly repelled from going anywhere near the game as a consequence? And, if those numbers really do fall down on the side of the sexist neanderthals, is Gearbox going to sleep soundly over a job well done?

Sexism remains part and parcel of interactive entertainment, because by and large the core games industry is still a boys' treehouse to which girls are only grudgingly invited. That being said, things have improved immensely - there are more and more prominent females in the industry, and an increasingly wide understanding of the fact that there is a big audience out there to whom a girl in a metal bikini is the basis for rolled eyes rather than opened wallets. Yet I believe that it's still important to challenge the most utterly shameful examples of sexism, and homophobia, and yes, even racism in gaming, because a reminder every now and then that the audience isn't entirely made up of white American 17-year-old straight males doesn't go amiss.

Moreover, this isn't about censorship - to which I remain implacably opposed (although not to age ratings, which are an entirely different issue). Rather, it's about game companies, particularly those with excellent reputations and those entrusted with well-known franchises and brands, simply having the maturity to remember that they're part of an ecosystem, part of a wider entertainment medium that's still finding its way in the world - and part of a wider society in which women, and many minority groups, are still discriminated against (sometimes violently) every day.

It's important sometimes to stand back from what you're making and ask, is this cheap and slightly uncomfortable laugh really worth it? Does it add so much value that it's worth making light of domestic violence, of misogyny? In this case, the balance is clear. For Gearbox to recognise this and drop the feature wouldn't be censorship, it would be maturity.

If you work in the games industry and want more views, and up-to-date news relevant to your business, read our sister website GamesIndustry.biz, where you can find this weekly editorial column as soon as it is posted.

Picture of Rob.

About Rob Fahey

Rob Fahey is a former editor of GamesIndustry.biz who spent several years living in Japan and probably still has a mint condition Dreamcast Samba de Amigo set.

Read more articles from Rob by visiting the Rob Fahey archive page.

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Comments (540) Latest comment 9 months ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Lexx87 #1 11 months ago

    Don't like how the article goes from a playful bottom slap to "slapping a woman to calm her down". Very much not the same thing.

  • LetsGo #2 11 months ago

    At the end of the day, its Duke, its all part of the games setting.

    Duke wouldn't buy her flowers would he.... his not that type of guy.

  • Widge #3 11 months ago

    Might just be Duke but it goes to show that this kind of game design is a relic to be consigned to past.

  • TheNinkyNonk #4 11 months ago

    Dear Rob: man the fuck up.

    Now where did I leave my babe...

  • Tomahawk #5 11 months ago

    Dude Huggems the politically correct action game.

    Press A to hug!

  • YenooR #6 11 months ago

    Sounds like fun to me

  • DiamondIce #7 11 months ago

    I can't say I am overly offended by it all; you know what the game is going to be like before starting it. I would unlikely play the game as I have never seen the fuss with Duke Nukem. I did spend hours building maps on the editor though. Good fun.

  • sarcasmoidosis #8 11 months ago

    The slaughter of thousands is in the "realms of utter fantasy" , but a game mode in which several Duke Nukems are trying to snag a woman and carry her to a designated point is realistic?

    Again and again we see the same argument. Violence in video games is ok, as long as it's directed at adult males. If it's a child or a woman, we go berserk.

    Gratuitous violence is just that, no matter who is on the receiving end and the point that the author makes and doesn't back up is that it influences people into believing it's ok to do that. Which is the argument of the likes of Fox News...

  • crisotunity #9 11 months ago

    "The slaughter of thousands by an improbable super-soldier is pretty blatantly within the realms of utter fantasy." - Rob "I have not read a paper in 20 years`' Fahey.

    How dare you come up with a statement like this during a week where these revelations come out? I know this is the internet and I should not get upset about semi-literate nonsense, but damn it:
    [link url=http://www.guardian.co. uk/world/2011/mar/23/us-soldier-admits-killing-afghans?INTCM P=SRCH
    ]http://ww w.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar...[/link]
    And if you have the stomach
    [link url=http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518, 752310,00.html
    ]http://ww w.spiegel.de/international/worl...[/link]

    Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.
    This sort of analysis has a place in this website, but you do need better writers. Till you get them, please stick to console wars.

  • Freek #10 11 months ago

    Context is everything. Espeically when humor is considered. Idiocracy, Black Adder, Married With Children, Scrubs, (to name a few) all feature pletty of sexist remarks and sometimes mysogonist characters. But in the context of their world and the written dialogue the jokes work without being offensive.
    Will Gearbox be able to pull of the same thing with Duke? Perhaps, perhaps not. The thing they are parodying hasn't been relevant for a long time. Although given the succes of The Expendables, that genre still seems to be in allot of peoples minds as a fun guilty pleasure.

    And even if the capture the babe mode is blatantly offensive I'll still get the game, just won't play that particular part of it. Because i'm still curiouse, it's still Duke Nukem. Especially after 10 years it's almost a case wanting to see for myself what they were up to. And Duke also had allot of revolutionairy features for it's day. The level of interactivity in the enviroment and level design woulden't be rivaled untill Half Life came along.

    And lets not forget that the internet in general is offensive to everyone who isn't part of a particular group. Gaming diden't invent that, it's the anonimity combined with the power to speak or write to anybody that makes people say really stupid and insulting things everywhere.
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 09:16

  • DiamondIce #11 11 months ago

    I hadn't heard of Gamestation's latest offering. Lovely stuff. I wouldn't step foot in the place as it usually smells of 2 week old body odour and urine.

  • TheTrueSpin #12 11 months ago

    What a rubbish article.

  • RobTheBuilder #13 11 months ago

    The CTB mode just seemed like a silly thing from the very start, not sure why on earth they thought it would work... even in a Duke game!

    As for Gamestation, I think anyone who thinks about it would realise they were in no way trying to say "girls are cheap" but were referring to the cost of buying things for or going places with your girlfriend. Why they didn't make this clear in their PR response I have no idea.

  • metalangel #14 11 months ago

    What does Ellie think about all this? I don't want to assume, but I get the feeling that she will correctly see it as the silly fun that it's intended as. My own missus does.

    This is a case of getting offended on someone else's behalf.

    EDIT: (Or Keza, I forgot Keza, sorry)
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 09:52

  • zrerz #15 11 months ago

    ok, so why is violence acceptable when it's women striking men? I refer to Doctor Who, where more than once Catherine Tate slapped David Tennant in a prime time tv show, talk about double standards!

  • Gambit1977 #16 11 months ago

    Women fill in more surveys because they read more daft magazines and want more handbags as prizes!

  • jag10 #17 11 months ago

    bangin 7 gram rocks.

  • zoidberg #18 11 months ago

    This article is the one that's actually "pandering".

    There are two things this doesn't take into account. First of all, in the US, and in the UK as well, we have something called free speech. Duke could very well murder Afghans, Iraqis, Martians, Sith, Mario, Luigi and then slap the ass off Hillary Clinton, and it would still be ACCEPTED as free speech. If you start imposing lines on what people can say and think, even by "playful ass slapping a babe", the censorship will never stop.

    Second, if women are a big demographic, and I'm not stating otherwise, then we'll see their opinion upon release. Duke will sell or it won't. The market can correct itself in such a way that if something's offensive and rubbish, it'll simply not sell. If, however, your article is wrong, Duke Nukem Forever will sell millions.

  • SteveHolt #19 11 months ago

    my 2 cents: videogames are just as sexist and misogynistic (spelling?) as your average blockbuster movie and TV commercial. The common link? Very simple: most of those "products" are manufactured by men.

    Watch the credits, and most of the time you'll realize that very few women are involved in the creative process, and that the production executives are all men. As a result, female characters (even the "strong" ones) are most of the time the product of a male fantasy, and executives only have an abstract knowledge of what will be considered offensive or not. Same goes to an extent with minorities - what is a racial stereotype? Is RE5 racist? How could the devs know, since none of them belongs to that minority? Is Duke offensive? Maybe, but, as far as EG goes, this article should be written by Ellie Gibson, not Rob Fahey.

  • Murton #20 11 months ago

    Right, first allow me to say good article, I disagree with large parts of it, but that doesn't make it bad so good work Rob. Now with my comment.

    People have every right not to be offended, I agree with that whole heartedly but nobody has the right to be offended if you understand what I mean. The "bottom slap" in Duke Nukem isn't inherently offensive, if you were slapping her in the face to calm her down it would be without question but a slap on the backside certainly isn't offensive on its own, it largely depends on the context and anyone who is deciding that it is offensive or defending people who are deciding to be offended isn't someone who is going to help debate on what is offensive and what isn't. I hate the term "PC gone mad" but in some instances it is true sadly.

    Also, is it not a little unfair to ignore the large number of well adjusted women who don't mind a slap on the arse or actually enjoy it in some cases? Not from strangers certainly but from their boyfriends and husbands in a playful manner, should these men be bundled in with the "thick browed cretins" who believe domestic violence is acceptable?

    It seems that every time a game features a female character the appearance, context and interactions of that character are analysed in order to find a reason to take offense, and it's not just those of a Daily Mail/Fox News persuasion who are getting in on this, the industry, whether it be a games company or a journo also wade in and more often than not make things worse as Rob has done here by siding with those who have chosen to be offended by something that simply isn't. the games industry need to stop being so defensive and that goes for journos and gamers too. You don't see the porn industry releasing defense statements about the treatment of women or the light violence in fetish porn because they've come to the realisation that people are by and large well adjusted and will buy what they like and ignore what they don't like, every month we see a game released that someone takes offense too but we see almost no attacks on the weekly releases of the porn industry that go far beyond games in some areas, we should be looking to see why that is and see if we can adopt their mindset to better deal with the cretins who choose to be offended by utterly benign video game content.

    EDIT: typos
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 09:36

  • itsfuzzy #21 11 months ago

    Rob did your missus get you to write this? You can stick a hatchet in a mans neck, ala COD Black Ops, but you cant slap a womans behind. Get of your politically correct bandwagon, its disturbing.

  • Gearskin #22 11 months ago

    ... Rob Fahey's boyfriend needs to learn the difference between a spank and a SHORYUKEN!

  • udat #23 11 months ago

    While I haven't decided yet how I feel about this part of the game, mostly because I haven't played it myself, I think you're basically completely wrong Zoidberg.

    1. Did you read the article in entirity? Because the censorship angle was covered near the end but you seem to have missed it.

    2. That has nothing to do with it, and that point is also covered in the article. If you focus on that you are missing the point of the article entirely.

    Personally, I will play it and decide, and if I decide it's a Bad Thing then I will not play that mode, and possibly write to Gearbox and tell them.

  • Abscido #24 11 months ago

    Gearbox should just add an option where the babe in question can be male or female. I'd put money on the male babe becoming at least as popular as the female one - all those 17-year-old Americans in question are desperate for some unshackled bromance. Just look at tea-bagging for God's sake!

  • 3william56 #25 11 months ago

    Nice one Gearbox. Yet again, someone's crass stupidity makes us all look like adolescents.

    Lexx - check the game description. There's no "playful" anywhere - you have to grab a woman and subdue her with a slap on the arse. No-one's mentioned it yet, but this is painfully close to the "rape simulator" there was such a (fake) fuss about a few years back.

    "It's Duke Nukem" you say? So what? How about "It's KKK Kenny", so let's have us a game about burning a cartoon cross or two or havin' a good ole lynchin - all the darkies will know it's all just a bitta fun. Hell, what about Nigel The Naughty Nazi? Let's make a super chucklesome romp searching out those cheeky bignoses hiding in the lofts - gotta find them all! All in the best possible taste, of course...

    Clearly labelling something as juvenile misogynistic trash doesn't make it right - it just makes it honest.

    I'm not offended on behalf of someone else - I'm offended for myself, thanks.

    And worse, it's just so f**king embarrassing to have this associated with one of my hobbies.

  • feistycheese #26 11 months ago

    I agree, a virtual slap on a womans arse is just too far.

    Now please excuse me, I must dash off, I'm in the middle of a GTA game and this whore Ive just shagged isn't getting away without me knocking my money back out of her with a baseball bat . . .

  • CaptainQuint #27 11 months ago

    NEWS FLASH: Capture the Babe DIDN'T turn the women's movement back a hundred years, after all!

    I probably won't even play this game, but I have no time for blokes like the one who wrote this article.

    Methinks he takes himself (and the industry) a bit TOO seriously. He's entitled to his opinion, of course. The fact is though (as much as it clearly irritates him), society on the whole is fine about stuff like this and that includes women. It's merely a case of having a bit of perspective on such things and being able to see it for the perfectly acceptable silliness it is. If anything I'd say this particular example is reminiscent of the old [romantic] idea of a caveman clubbing his woman on the head and carrying her back to the cave. Hate it if you must, but a good many women actually love that image.

    When I was younger I'd have probably been a bit more appreciative of an article such as this one, but I dunno, having a family and worrying about what's happening elsewhere in the world lately makes articles like this seem scrawny and insignificant.

    I can't be doing with whiny do-gooders moaning about shit like this, sorry.

    Looking at the writer's Twitter account, I don't think he's taken the reaction here to kindly: <a href="http://mobile.twit ter.com/robfahey
    ">http://mobile.twit ter.com/robfahey
    </a>

    Did he just call the EG readership "cunts"?

    Oops...
    Edited by 3 at 26/03/11 @ 11:22

  • hiscore #28 11 months ago

    Sexism is also deciding for women what is right or wrong for them. So, in my opinion this article is as sexist as a slap on the butt.

  • Gearskin #29 11 months ago

    Pick up woman, spank woman.

    Pick up woman... Rape Woman?

    I can't see the connection, 3william56.

    Now we can all marvel as all the comments calling out this article get marked down by the PC brigade. You all deserve a spanking!

  • Scurrminator #30 11 months ago

    No different to an exploitive flick like Sucker Punch. For the first time ever an article I disagree with!

  • djed #31 11 months ago

    I like how Call of Duty is written off as "utter fantasy" while a 300 pound gorilla with a coarse voice fighting humongous alien brains in football stadium is the apex of realistic role models.

    And stop saying the nineties were "less intelligent" like it's some kind of immutable fact or instant argument winner. Don't blame your own hypocrisy on the nineties.

  • cjb_bjc #32 11 months ago

    Does not compute

  • Gearskin #33 11 months ago

    Also, who has actually seen this mode?

    Is the woman in question preaching innuendo, giggling and, in effect, all part of the joke?
    Or is she screaming "ARGHHH, PUT ME DOWN! I DON'T WANT TO! STOP! NOOOOOO!"

    ???

    I wonder.

  • jonbwfc #34 11 months ago

    What most offends me most about CTB is it's patently there to grab headlines and news coverage - it's crass and it's wilfully so, to get just the kind and amount of coverage Rob is conspiring to give it. I'm not aware of the Gamestation advertising campaign he highlights, nor would it make me want to go into a Gamestation (wild horses etc...) but it patently has the same goals. By writing a (relatively) indignant article about them, Rob has just mad the more successful in the eyes of the people who developed them.

    I can't imagine there are many women who would be calmed by being smacked on the rear but then I never expect video games to be realistic. These days, I do kind of expect them to at least have something approaching an IQ in double figures. There will always be thick necked macho space marine games but that doesn't make taking them to an extreme 'funny'. It's kind of.. well, you know having a few drinks with friend is fun, right? But then someone has a few too many and they're not fun any more, they're just tedious and a pain in the neck? It's like that. Duke Nukem isn't the end of civilisation as we know it, it's just a video game that doesn't know when 'enough is enough'.

    Jon

  • danjfor #35 11 months ago

    That's a pretty glib dismissal of Penny Arcade's point - you're telling us Duke Nukem is closer to life than Call of Duty? Duke Nukem isn't a junkie on a housing estate beating his wife, he's a man in a tank top firing a shrinkray at a pig with a machinegun. Knife crime is a huge problem in real life, so should we remove melee attacks from CoD?

  • Gearskin #36 11 months ago

    Watch THIS!

    [link url=http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=OAbiFuhsLTY
    ]http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=OAbiFuhsLTY
    [/link]

    Capture the Babe in FULL EFFECT!

  • scoop #37 11 months ago

    Rob, you're seeing too many trees in the forest.

    It's harmless fun - I've asked my wife about it and she thought it was typical, but pretty funny.

    Compared to zombie children being thrown through windows, who cares about a little buttock slapping? Should be ban Carry On Camping too?

  • toy_brain #38 11 months ago

    Right topic, wrong angle.
    Ellie's response to it on the EG.net podcast was far more appropriate really. Its just a feature that makes you want to roll your eyes, sigh, and say "Really? really? You thought putting this in the game was a good idea?", then possibly tut several times while waving your finger in the direction of Randy Pitchford.
    Domestic violence? Misogyny? Nahh, give it a rest Rob.

    I want to play DNF because it is a game with history. A game that has a story to tell about game development gone wrong, a game that spanned 3 decades of development. I want to play it to pick around the levels to see just what the hell was so complicated it took them 14 years to put out.
    I.......I actually don't care about playing a Duke Nukem game, (Does anyone?) I just want to play history, and the more Gearbox tries to push the babes and strippers angle, the more I'm turned off buying it for its juvenile attitude.
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 15:01

  • geeza2020 #39 11 months ago

    What a nonsense article. It reads like Rob is trying to impress some new female politics student friends of his.

    "I'm not a misogynist me, look at this horrible duke nukem game mode, its degrading to women and the industry blah blah blah"

    When in fact, it really is just a bit of fun, and Rob makes himself look a right tit.

  • kupocake #40 11 months ago

    Ok, so on the one hand, it's impossible to get offended in any real terms by Duke Nukem because the series should be like the Ashton Kutcher of gaming or something. The price of entry is half your IQ. It's where tired minds go to see some flashing lights and dumb humour, where no-one was pretending to cater for women whatsoever. In principle a 'Slap the Slag' (come on, it started out being called that and you know it) mode is offensive, but like Ashton Kutcher, the very existence of the product is going to offend whatever it does.

    The problem lies with the fact that there's no counter-point to it whatsoever. Dead Space 2 exhausted gaming's quota of hoody-wearing female sidekicks, games are just genuinely struggling to represent anything but white hetrosexual males. All those 'best female character' lists we love to compile for a self congratulatory pat on the back are filled with characters who are inoffensive, as opposed to compelling.

    Perhaps it's the sheer celebrity of the game they could never finish, but the sad thing is that Duke Nukem Forever is being held aloft like the best the industry has to offer. This is kind of contrary to how Gearbox has been pushing it, from what I see anyway. Inoffensive yokel gaming. But it is quite sad that gaming's answer to What Happens In Vegas is going to be even distantly sneered at by true games buffs. Seriously. This thing is Postal not Portal.

  • Inmediasress #41 11 months ago

    Duke is Duke slapping some babes arse is probgably the mildest offence he commited against willing participants.
    We still live in a mysoginistic society and that will probably never change.
    Only the degree of mysoginism changes but full eaquality will be probably never reached until men rule the world if women would rule the world than men would be treated unequal.
    As for the whole female gamer argument, it is somehow flawed I think it is mostly sims and zyngas nice farming utensils game and maybe some mmos.
    I have a lot of friends girls that is and most of them wouldn't touch an rpg or fps they say its uninteresting.LOL I tried guiding them along the path believe me.
    Most girls don't care too much about this kind of shit that's not to say ,there aren't any who play these games but probabaly there are more males.

  • Upface #42 11 months ago

    I admit that I haven't followed the build up to DNF so this is the first time I've even heard of this mode. It's inclusion is obviously in order to grab some headlines and get a bit of free viral marketing; and in this case it's worked, so well played Gearbox.

    As for the sexism etc issue, I think the author has blown this way out of proportion. I certainly wouldn't play it in front of my female friends. Not because I'm worried they would be outraged/offended/traumatised but because they'd take the piss out of me for playing something so blatantly adolescent!

    As for the tone of this article: I myself am part of a minority group; and the only thing that ever really offends me is when someone starts telling me that I should be offended about something! Really Rob, you should know better.

  • gingerpembers #43 11 months ago

    This article is pretty pathetic. Get over it.

    Also, calling for maturity in a Duke Nukem game? Do you even have any grasp on what you're writing about here?

  • Mister-Wario #44 11 months ago

    I quite like the article, and if its comments on the amount of female gamers is accurate then it's something we really should address. Unfortunately, I fear the reaction shows Duke Nukem Forever is a game designed to be outrageous and over the top. We expect a certain game experience and Capture the Babe falls under this. That doesn't necessarily make it right, but it does make its inclusion unsurprising. Basically, I'm very reluctant to buy this game now.

    kupocake: I thought Alyx and Faith were quite compelling characters. Maybe not the greatest, but not the worst, either. And to be fair, wasn't a Dragon Age game released recently with the option of being homosexual?

    PS: on an unrelated note, I wonder how many women will buy this game.

  • binster #45 11 months ago

    If you're doing something that may give offense, you should be able to give a good reason why you're doing it.

    Case in point is Tim Minchin's Pope song - highly offensive but with a watertight reason for existing.

    If Gearbox can provide a decent argument for including a bottom slap, then it's fine.

    Caveat : I've not seen footage of, or played this bottom slapping thing, but if the argument for it is decent enough that shouldn't matter.

  • Graveland #46 11 months ago

    This article belongs in that pathetic newspaper The Guardian.

  • Averice #47 11 months ago

    I've never understood the hiding aspect. How is the process of a female hiding her gender in an online faceless video game in order to avoid confrontation any different from anyone else trying to hide from confrontation?

    Hiding your gender, your ethnicity, your sexual preference, doesn't prevent faceless people around you from saying things. And that's Microsofts fault for not clamping down on this type of thing better. They should have a zero tolerance policy. IMO That should be your next article in regards to sexism. Please tell Microsoft how they would actually Increase xbox live subscribers if they policed it properly.

    As for this article, I don't like how you suggest equality but then also suggest special catering towards interest groups.

  • Widge #48 11 months ago

    It just makes the game sound embarassing.

  • Lord_BeeJee #49 11 months ago

    They use a stereotype for a laugh and you write a 2 page article? My girlfriend says you are a bit too sensitive!

  • Kostabi #50 11 months ago

    Somebody to forgot to put on his man pants this morning.

    Slapping a woman's ass in Duke Nukem is not the same as a guy knocking his wife around in a domestic violence case, and the way the article compares a playful spank in a cartoon world to actual abuse is verging on Daily Mail style scaremongering before the product is even out the door.

    A super soldier killing thousands is 'utter fantasy' yet a muscle bound superhero rescuing a girl from a rival team isn't? Rob has definitely lost his sense of perspective while fishing for a make believe controversy. Sadly that seems to be the way EG has been going for a while now.

  • L0cky #51 11 months ago

    Alan Partridge is an egotistical cock. Yet I find him extremely funny. Just because I watch and enjoy the show doesn't mean that I agree with him or his behaviour. It's not a requirement of story telling.

    Context is everything.

    Rob, you come across as one of the minority that you described who cannot tell the difference between fantasy and reality. It's not about knowing that you are playing a game versus knowing that you are acting things out in real life; it's about being able to contextualise the story within the frame that it's presented.

    You're essentially suggesting that games should never present a protagonist with undesired behaviour, for the sake of preventing offense to those who have the inability to contextualise it.

    Whether what is being depicted actually occurs in real life or not is irrelevant. In fact, some games could very much illustrate undesired behaviour that is present in the real world for the sake of raising awareness or to illustrate a point; and I hope it could do eventually if there weren't so many people who cannot see the use of gaming as anything more than glib.

    This just comes off as not trusting or respecting gaming as a medium in the same way that you would for a novel or a movie; and is frankly disappointing from a writer at EG.

  • fluff_the_tiger #52 11 months ago

    What a terrible article - is Eurogamer turning into Demand Media and paying $15 an article or what?

    It's Duke Nukem for gawds sake - there are a certain niche of gamers who are looking forward to this type of "archaic" humour.

  • Hermiod #53 11 months ago

    Given that thousands of games for the last thirty years or so have been based exclusively around killing men, not slapping them, killing them, this article is ridiculous - especially when it's about a game where all of Earth's men have been turned in to pigs. If you want to complain about sexism, how about you complain about that?
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 11:00

  • DaemonSpawn #54 11 months ago

    So we have several wars in the world any given year, some guys bombing the shit out of Libya right now, the same guys killing arabs from the gunships in Iraq and Afghanistan, tortures, genocide all around the world... and Rob Fahey writes that "slaughter of thousands by an improbable super-soldier is pretty blatantly within the realms of utter fantasy".
    Bravo, Rob, now look up number of dead on the Iraq side and compare it to the official KIA count of US army. Still sounds improbable?

    What you are basically saying is that cultivating violence against men is acceptable (not just violence, but use of deadly force against hundreds and thousands. And if we're talking about strategies, then even millions), but slapping a virtual woman in the game about all the macho stereotypes is somehow not ok?

  • KingofDarkness #55 11 months ago

    Awful article.

    Blow it out your ass.

  • Thirith #56 11 months ago

    I love how many posters here a) can't discuss a different opinion without resorting to ad hominems and b) insult a guy's masculinity in doing so. If anything, it makes me think that the article has *more* of a point, and that many posters should get over themselves and the fact that people may have different opinions from them. If your counter-argument to Rob's article is, "Grow some balls, pussy!", that's pretty sad.

  • Murton #57 11 months ago

    @ binster

    I don't think creators should have to defend their creations, they should just be accepted as they are and if they cause a moral debate then so be it. I don't like this idea that we have to tip-toe around everything in case someone gets offended. There are plenty of things that are clear cut that everyone in civilised society will agree are offensive, (many of these enshrined in law) and most creators do well to stay out of that area but anything that is a shade of grey should be fair game in my eyes. Let an informed debate decide whether or not it was offensive, how anyone can be offended by an idea without context is beyond my comprehension to be honest, seems people are creating their own excuses to be offended rather than being genuinely offended.

    Consider the MotorStorm Apocalypse release, a game based around natural disasters so soon after an earthquake and tsunami that killed thousands would have been seen as insensitive by the majority and indeed offensive by some, I can see that side of the argument and agree with the decisions taken but what about wearing a Quicksilver T-shirt? Their logo is a massive wave over a mountain, would it be right to say that wearing Quicksilver T-shirts is offensive in the wake of the Japan disaster? Of course not, that would be blowing the situation way way out of sensible proportions, which is what is happening here as everyone who is crying "offensive" has no idea of the context, they're offended for the sake of being offended and I simply can't respect that position or indeed the people who take or defend that position.

  • marmaduke #58 11 months ago

    Simplest solution would to be a server setting that forced female Dukes on people and changed the 'babe' to a 'dude'. But they're not going to do that.

    Should comedy sexism still be written off entirely as sexism? I'm in two minds about this. It's not like DNF is going to be a full-on wife-beating simulator, but at the same time it is genuinely misogynist. I think the solution is this: if you're likely to hit women, this game is not going to make you hit them harder. It's willfully moronic, and most people are going to appreciate that.

  • frostcircus #59 11 months ago

    Well, I liked the article. I have nothing constructive nor vitriolic to say about it, but I feel compelled to post anyway

  • Stardusted #60 11 months ago

    Because in modern gaming/cinema you can blow heads up, throw intestines around, dismember arms and legs, but you can't slap a woman's ass...

  • himmelsturmerIX #61 11 months ago

    Get your head out of your ass fahey

  • CaptainQuint #62 11 months ago

    Looking at the writer's twitter account, it would appear he hasn't taken the reaction here to his article too kindly: [link url=http://mobile.twit ter.com/robfahey
    ]http://mobile.twit ter.com/robfahey
    [/link]

    Calling the EG readership "cunts" isn't gonna win you many more 'followers', Rob.

  • BurningR #63 11 months ago

    Good article, I agree completely with it's angel.

  • coomber #64 11 months ago

    It's humour. Get over it. And to think you criticise anyone for enjoying Richard Littlejohn's column while printing the sort of knee-jerk reaction Daily Mail readers have been lapping up for years makes you look ridiculous, not the developers of this game.

  • coomber #65 11 months ago

    @ CaptainQuint - good find, fella. I'll be interested to see what his boss has to say about that.

  • Hermiod #66 11 months ago

    Another question - the article says more women than men play video games, but how much money do they spend?

    How many female gamers were in the midnight queues for Black Ops, ready to hand over Ł45 for one game? I'd be interested to know what the average monthly spend on games - including the games themselves, DLC and other in-game content and the hardware to play them on etc - is for male and female gamers.

    Duke's producers know who will buy their game at full price on day one (the largely male, hardcore audience) and who won't (the female Ł1 iPhone game playing audience). If Duke should be criticised for ignoring an audience it was never going to attract, shouldn't movies like Sex and the City, for instance, be similarly criticised?

  • mrpsb #67 11 months ago

    I don't think Gearbox care that much, because they can hide behind the brand, tell everyone that's what is expected, and sit back enjoying free publicity. I'm also surprised "slap on the bottom" didn't become "arse rape" by the end of the article as it seemed to increase exponentially in severity from the starting point across the two pages.
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 11:17

  • marmaduke #68 11 months ago

    "Looking at the writer's twitter account, it would appear he hasn't taken the reaction here to his article too kindly: http://mobile.twit ter.com/robfahey"

    Twitter connects you to morons like never before!

    Pointing at his Twitter account does not make you right. Tweet this: you're a fucking moron.

  • WMain00 #69 11 months ago

    "Calling the EG readership "cunts" isn't gonna win you many more 'followers', Rob."

    Acting like cunts is not a good way of discussing a well written article, and you're all successfully acting like cunts.

    Here's a thought kids; try acting like mature adults for a second and discuss the topic at hand, rather than debase the character of the person writing the article. He makes a succinct enough point and you're acting like utter tools because he dares to argue against the norm. Fundementally you've all successfully emphasised the point he was making in the first place.

    Jesus christ.
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 11:18

  • beastmaster #70 11 months ago

    Without a shadow of a doubt, the worst article EG has ever published. Criticism of a game and gamers for being juvenile written with an infantile approach.

  • insincere_dave #71 11 months ago

    You're surely aware that not all women seek to define themselves by their intellect? If there's an elephant in the room it's that some women (and men) actively and knowingly trade on their status in life as a sex object. Men (and women) will lust after such people and some will inevitably seek to illustrate these urges / desires in the work they create. In this case it happens to be a video game universe which is so extreme that it bears little similarity to reality posing a danger to exactly no one.

    By saying that treating any women as sex objects is inherently wrong, you are denying a demographic of women the right to express themselves and live their lives as they would choose to do. This kind of sanctimony is as blinkered as the supposed misogynistic behaviour that it condescends to criticise with sweeping generalisations of supposed right and wrong.

    I usually enjoy your articles, Rob, but this article is plain wrong.

  • soviet_ #72 11 months ago

    it's PC gone mad innit

  • Psychotext #73 11 months ago

    Did I screw up the domain name and end up at the Daily Fail or something? The forced outrage is laughable.

    Should we wag our finger at Airplane for the comical slapping of a hysterical passenger? Should we recoil in horror at the endless face slapping antics of Andie McDowell in Groundhog Day? Ridiculous.

    As for making shooters broadly female friendly... you might as well try to make boxing appeal to women on the whole. Sure, you'll find some Women who do, but as a general rule it's well accepted that in life Men and Women enjoy different things and these things are usually targeted accordingly. We don't feel the need to force specific sports (or genres of sports if you will) to broaden their demographics, so why should gaming be any different?

    Edit - I can't spell.
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 12:00

  • Murton #74 11 months ago

    @DaemonSpawn

    There's also that Gurkha Rifles soldier who this week single handedly killed 30 Afghan militants before his backup arrived, including one kill in hand to hand combat when he ran out of ammo. If he had the sort of ammo stock and conveyor belt of militants offered by Call of Duty games he'd probably have killed ten times as many, so I'm inclined to agree with your point, CoD style super-soldiers aren't realistic but there are some extraordinary soldiers out there who come close.

    Vasily Zaytsev springs instantly to mind, making 225 verified kills in just 40 days during the Stalingrad campaign, official records give him over 500 hundred confirmed kills throughout WW2 and some historians believe that he may have made half as many again without confirmation, 700+ kills from a single soldier in a single war, he sounds pretty COD-like to me.

  • Hermiod #75 11 months ago

    @WMain00 - I have. I haven't said anything personal about Fahey.

    On the other hand:
    [link url=https://mobile.twitter.com/robfahey/status/515763291 82785536
    ]https://m obile.twitter.com/robfahey/stat...[/link]

    It was only a matter of time before somebody claimed that anyone who disagrees with this article must be defending white male privilege. Not surprised it was the article's author.

  • curtlikesmeat #76 11 months ago

    I other news, Daily Mail buys shares in Eurogamer.

  • BurningR #77 11 months ago

    Great article, I agree completely.

  • redcrayon #78 11 months ago

    To be fair, Duke Nukem is also a pisstake of the hyper-macho stereotype, and if the industry was on an equal footing, and there were plenty of games involving rock-hard female characters rescuing princes and leading helpless guys to safety, then I wouldn't see an issue with stuff like this.

    It's not though, and as the mindless trash-talking space marines that feature in games are ripe for mockery, how about we have a few more games sending them up first.

    I don't think it's sexist, just tasteless



  • governmentyard #79 11 months ago

    I was fairly interested in playing DNF before this article. Now I have to play it, just to find out how offensive or otherwise Capture the Babe is. And that's why the mode is in there.

    I'm also willing to test the theory that Metalangel's missus sees bum slapping as silly fun. I shall report back with findings. Most likely finding my teeth on the floor :)

  • CaptainQuint #80 11 months ago

    @marmaduke

    I haven't got a twitter account, you angry daft sod.

  • CaptainQuint #81 11 months ago

    @insincere_dave

    Brilliant response fella. Beautiful.

  • Kenshin001 #82 11 months ago

    Kind of agree with Rob. In a war situation I'd have no qualms about shooting the enemy and war games are a fictional representation of that, albeit in a somewhat juvenile way. My grandfather fought in a war but he had a huge respect for women. I wouldn't grab a random woman and start slapping her arse. It's no wonder the stereoptype of a gamer is a smelly misogynistic nerd with no girlfriend. Coincidentally it's those nerds who probably will make up the majority of DNF buyers. Don't think it has to do with a sense of humour either, I mean I'd probably find it funny myself if I was 13 years old.

  • Kami #83 11 months ago

    Mostly all been said, but context here - slapping a womans bottom or slapping a woman?

    Okay, it's immature and mysoganistic but then, you're talking about Duke Nukem - a game with is also a relic from that quaint 90's male douchebaggery. There's a point where you know EXACTLY what you're getting - and if a game is going to offend you. Duke Nukem is, at least, clear from the fore that it isn't PC.

    THat said, it's disingenuous and bordering on absurd to suggest that games like Call of Duty and their supersoldier one-man-armies are enough in the realm of fantasy and Duke Nukem isn't. Duke is, yes, a product of an era that doesn't exist anymore - it's a relic, a remnant of a time when men could still probably get away with this behaviour - an era when even a President got a happy lollipop from a modestly attractive Jewish girl behind his wifes back. But he's so clearly NOT real - he's a charicature of an all-American hero, and in all honesty, these days a pretty embarassing charicature at that.

    I remember Duke Nukem first time around - boy my grandparents hated it - but even back then I had a sense that it was taking more than the piss, it was taking liberties. It's a game series I remember for the sex and violence and in that vein, I suppose this mode follows on from that well-trodden path.

    The problem is this - I don't remember Duke Nukem - or any of the follow-up spin offs - being any good as games. It's a game that I've felt always lives or dies on its controversy... and yes, we've been waiting years for this particular chestnut and yes, it's interesting and cute in that "Aww, it's still going?!" kind of way. If the game isn't much cop though, then all it will do is reinforce why it's been so hard to pull Duke into the modern world - because, truthfully, he's pretty much an dumb American hillbilly twat with as much depth and sophistication as an Action Man doll taking a Barbie doll from behind.

    The game has to deliver on quality and content beyond the headlines. There's a reason why the PS1 Duke's didn't do so well - they were, quite frankly, rubbish games. We've changed so much in the last 20-ish years socially - I've grown up from awkward teenager to rapidly approaching middle-age nerd, but being a nerd isn't that bad these days. Being a Jock, however, isn't quite as cool as it once was - girls aren't into that now. Taking my little sister (who is 20 now so perhaps little sister isn't the best term to use) she's into Twilight, Harry Potter, she loves Yuna and Tidus from FFX and she does play games - often violent ones. The world has changed - even if TV shows and movies and comic and games would like us to remain in a 1960's state of nuclear family and rampant sexist bull.

    The fun question that was posed about DNF is why there was no Female Duke. I have to admit, this is a good question - I remember there being a FemDoom (although that was pretty sexist too). So why is there no female counterpart to Duke? Or at least, a female equal? Is it because it offends their early-20th Century ideology of an All-American Hero? Because they didn't think it necessary? Or is it because they can't imagine a woman behaving in this way?

    Smack My B**** Up, baby.

    As for Gamestation though, that was a pretty dense slogan to use. But I don't use Gamestation, so they can alienate away - I'm not sure I care... :)

  • morriss #84 11 months ago

    Good article, Rob.

  • Mockerre #85 11 months ago

    ‘The slaughter of thousands by an improbable super-soldier is pretty blatantly within the realms of utter fantasy. Slapping women? That's something which, sadly, happens every day in countless households around the world.’

    How f****** dare you? There are literally dozens of wars going on at this very moment, thousands are being killed and you’re writing it off as an utter fantasy? You aren’t concerned that most CoD-style shooters create a racist stereotype against people from Russia, China, Afghanistan etc.? But you will go on and on about this?

    Get your head out of your ass. The only person in need of a slapping down is you, Mr. Fahey.

  • BBIAJ #86 11 months ago

    "...but even commercially, will the number of thick-browed cretins who decide to buy Duke Nukem Forever because you can slap women..."

    Are you really suggesting that some people will buy DNF for the sole reason and purpose of slapping a pretend ladies bottom?

    Seriously!?

  • schoozzzmmii #87 11 months ago

    How is anyone supposed to have an intelligent discussion here if some people bury the comments of those they don't agree with.

  • linea #88 11 months ago

    Le me first say that I think people should be free to make, buy and enjoy whatever kind of entertainment they want.

    But I'm reminded of a comment the comedian Richard Herring made about going to see his friend Al Murray perform and being suddenly uncomfortably aware that the majority of the audience weren't enjoying Murray's ironic jingosim on an ironic level...

    The idea of slapping women in a game *does* make me uncomfortable, even if it's in an ironic, cartoonish context. The only point where I diverge from Rob's viewpoint is that lots of other representations of things in videogames make me uncomfortable too (military shooters with modern-day settings and their borderline racist representations of certain nationalities being one), and I applaud him for at least standing up and questioning whether this sort of thing should be acceptable. Maybe he overstated his case a bit mind...






  • CaptainQuint #89 11 months ago

    @kenshin001

    Why do you care about what other people think of your hobby? And why might Duke Nukem only be funny to 13 year olds?

    The irony in this whole thread is 100% prime fillet delicious.

  • trousers #90 11 months ago

    A quick late reskin of the ladies in question to Chandler Bing would solve everything I'm sure.

  • Hermiod #91 11 months ago

    @Kenshin001 - I was taught that violence towards anyone is wrong. That's the difference here. Prioritising women's lives shows misandrist tendancies that, quite frankly, are common amongst the people who agree with this sort of article.

  • matti76 #92 11 months ago

    Jesus wept - EG is invaded by Clarkson acolytes and their faux-intellectual translations of 'the birds luv a good slap, stop bein' so fackin PC, it's all 'armless fun, innit?''

    Heart-warming stuff after a BBC blog yesterday about sexual harrassment - according to the intelligensia who responded there, being chased in a car by four males and then grabbed and pinned to a wall is all harmless fun as well. I'm so glad there's no need for feminism anymore.

    Any instance of pop culture churning out misogynistic shit, no matter how ostensibly 'trivial', should be rounded on. Once the mildest of behaviour is dismissed, more unpleasant actions inevitably get normalised and become likewise 'trivial'. Everyone knows this is a central tenet of human nature - most feel more comfortable denying it.

    In 50 years time I see a distopian society of legal snuff movies - Lights Out Baby by Snoop Dogg, or some such - and the same anti-PC crowd calling it harmless fun and telling feminists to get over it, ever heard of free speech, etc?

    Think it won't happen? Let's hope you're right.

  • Desheep #93 11 months ago

    This article is pathetic.

  • Hermiod #94 11 months ago

    @schoozzzmmii - One side of the argument has been given front page prominence, the playing field is not exactly level to begin with. You won't be able to have a fair discussion about this because the arguments have not been presented fairly.

    There won't be a similar article from anyone with an opposing view given equal prominence.

  • King_Edward #95 11 months ago

    What a complete arse of an article. You should be ashamed of the attention you're bringing to an absolute non-issue. I look forward to your future Daily Mail works.

  • Saint_of_Killers #96 11 months ago

    I was quickly scanning the article looking specifically for where it spoke of Duke. I missed it and so went to page two. I read Gear Box have assigned a button which slaps women and did a massive mental facepalm and wondered how anyone could get it so wrong. But seeing as I'd missed the beginning of the actual Duke piece of the writing I went back to page one... and then realised the author is upset about the ability to slap a girl on the bum. That's it? Phew!

  • ExplodingClown #97 11 months ago

    Dear All,

    Please read this: [link url=http://www.cracked.co m/article_18571_5-reasons-its-still-not-cool-to-admit-youre- gamer.html
    ]http://ww w.cracked.com/article_18571_5-r...[/link]

    It's really quite germane to the matter under 'discussion' here. Point #4 mostly.

    As far as this CTB business, it just feels embarrassingly adolescent. Irony was the defence for sexism back when the whole New Lad thing started back in the 90's, but the generational shift seems to have lost the irony. TITS OR GTFO, indeed.

    @Murton: when I was a student nurse on an elderly med/infected surgical ward, I was given a 'difficult' patient to attend to, as none of the qualified staff wanted to deal with him. He turned out to be an ex-SEAL who had served in Viet Nam. I got to know him and he told me some of his story (culminating in his injury, capture, torture and escape). He told me he had over 400 confirmed kills to his name. He looked at me with eyes like burned holes and said "They're my ghosts, man". He was the most physically and spiritually damaged man I have ever met.
    Edited by 2 at 26/03/11 @ 13:11

  • angerisagift #98 11 months ago

    Actually, I think this article is the sort of thing that I would expect to see in the Guardian rather than the Daily fail. Both of them are rags that I wouldn't wipe my arse with, mind you.

  • Hermiod #99 11 months ago

    @matti76 - I read that article and it further illustrates my point. At no point was a counter argument presented. It was an utterly one-sided portrayal of men as if we, as in all of us, roam the streets violently harassing women with impunity.

    Even the argument that men aren't even allowed to look at women drew no criticism.

  • Kenshin001 #100 11 months ago

    @CaptainQuint, well, it comes up in conversation. People discuss their interests when meeting others. As an adult, telling people you like video games can be a bit cringe inducing. It's like saying you collect stuffed toys. As for what's funny I was specifically referring to grabbing a woman, throwing her over the shoulder and slapping her on the arse. It doesn't even raise a smirk for me sorry. Tell you what, ask your female friends if they can see the humour.

  • spekkeh #101 11 months ago

    Gee, here I never thought the movie Airplane! was the root cause of thirty years of domestic violence and misogyny.

    http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=SYiv76qRCkA

  • uknortherner2000 #102 11 months ago

    @CaptainQuint: It's worth posting that tweet for posterity, I think:

    "The latter of those arguments is particularly odious. Selfish, ignorant, fuckwitted white male whinging. Cunts."

    http://tw itter.com/robfahey/status/51576...
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 12:02

  • midnight_walker #103 11 months ago

    I don't remember anyone kicking up this much of a stink about Fat Princess.

  • CaptainQuint #104 11 months ago

    @matti76

    "Jesus wept - EG is invaded by Clarkson acolytes and their faux-intellectual translations of 'the birds luv a good slap, stop bein' so fackin PC, it's all 'armless fun, innit?''

    Presumably the entire EG readership is from the east end of London, in your world?

    Way to display an astounding degree of stereotypical prejudice in one short sentence, chap. Sort of undermined the rest of your argument at that point.

    Yep, your shit stinks, too.

  • soviet_ #105 11 months ago

    Brass Eye would cover this issue quite nicely

  • spekkeh #106 11 months ago

    While I think this was a well written piece, and I sympathize with what Fahey's trying to say, he took the wrong examples making his argument fundamentally flawed.

    It's sexist to assume girls only like Horsez and Me and not macho games.
    It's sexist to make macho games.

    If Duke Nukem should cater to the female gamer more, Fahey implies (or is of the implicit opinion) that the female public has markedly different tastes than the male public. Which, by his own account, is stereotypical and therefore sexist.

    edit: changed misogynist to sexist
    Edited by 2 at 26/03/11 @ 12:16

  • jstar #107 11 months ago

    Your article has no internal consistency and contradicts itself repeatedly. You can't expect anyone to take your arguments seriously if you arbitrarily decide that slapping a woman on the ass is unacceptable because it promotes domestic abuse but killing a load of people in a warzone is fine. That literally makes no sense. I'm sure if you took a trip round Basra you'd find a few bereaved people who were offended at the thought of us playing wargames on our HD TV's. Does that mean we shouldn't do it? According to you the answer to that is both yes and no which is somewhat confusing.

    There really has to be a line somewhere between promoting equality and massively over reacting. If any adult plays Duke Nukem and actually thinks it's ok to treat women like that then they are fucked in the head. And why the hell didn't you write this shitty sanctimonious article about Fable 3. Because in that you can take your wife to the woods and kill her. Oh, but John Clees narrates it so it's fine.

  • weejok #108 11 months ago

    Eurogamer turns into the Daily Mail?? WTF! It's Duke Nukem FFS!

  • jimboton #109 11 months ago

    "It's unquestionably the product of a slightly dafter and less intelligent time"

    well of all the stupid and disingenuous things said in the article I think this is actually one of the worst.

    You either didn't play many games then or you don't now Rob

  • jstar #110 11 months ago

    It's misogynist to assume girls only like Horsez and Me and not macho games.
    It's misogynist to make macho games.

    You do realise that misogyny means HATING women. Making a macho game does not mean you HATE women. And making fluffy Horses and me games does not mean you HATE women.

  • skullstorm #111 11 months ago

    Let's just play Equality Simulators.

    We'll have a blast!

  • Psychotext #112 11 months ago

    "The latter of those arguments is particularly odious. Selfish, ignorant, fuckwitted white male whinging. Cunts."

    Yes... that's some impressive intellectualism right there. Congratulations Fahey, you just evolved into little more than a comments troll, incapable of appreciating that others may have differing, but still valid, opinions.

  • kupocake #113 11 months ago

    "Showed the article to my girlfriend (28), my sister (24) and my mum (58).

    They don't get what the fuss is about. Probably because they are not idiots."

    Or maybe, just maybe, they don't get why you're making them read it in the first place, and just saying what you want to hear to get you to shut up and leave them alone? I can't remember a time in my life when I've been 'shown an article' by a person rendered indignant by its contents without wanting to punch them square in the dick for interrupting my precious free-time.

    "I don't remember anyone kicking up this much of a stink about Fat Princess."
    Actually there was controversy. You just... err, don't remember it.
    Edited by 2 at 26/03/11 @ 12:15

  • spudsbuckley #114 11 months ago

    Terrible pointless article.

    Gaming is still dominated by men, very few of whom would be even slightly offended by Duke's CTB mode.

  • spekkeh #115 11 months ago

    @jstar: you're right, should be sexist, although I thought Fahey did imply sexist in a negative way towards women.

  • jstar #116 11 months ago

    This is classic male behavior. Have a big argument and decide how women should be feeling about something. How sexist and old fashioned is that?

    I want to know what Ellie/Keza think.

  • williambutlergates #117 11 months ago

    Dear Robert. I've registered so as to tell you this, and I hope you give it some thought. I very much sympathise with your lament that games, and popular media more generally, are unpleasantly full of demeaning sexism. I also agree that while women face numerous very serious and very physical dangers and disadvantages in the world today, pop cultural ephemera do play some role in maintaining discourses of power and subjugation. I also agree with your evident view that the games industry really needs to grow up a bit.
    What I don't think you realise is that you are part of the problem, and I found your article even more embarrassing than the game it described. I'll repeat that: you are part of the problem.
    Your article drips with the most patronising of attitudes toward women. In internet parlance, your piece perfectly fits the genre of 'White Knight'ing. You are (perhaps complicit with the creators of this game) manufacturing a controversy, the leitmotiv of which remains that women are weak and need your protection. Your likening of this game's 'babe-slapping' (which, unlike the violent content of CoD et al, is clearly intended as ironic - though personally I don't find it funny) element to rape and domestic violence is offensively exaggerated, cheapening the real suffering of real people by that comparison. Meanwhile, your refusal to recognise the reality of gender aspects to military violence while our country is engaged in multiple simultaneous wars waged almost exclusively by men is simply preposterous. More broadly, your dismissal of comparisons with other objectionable gendered material in games ('men as hulking remorseless machines' - the other side of the coin from 'women as weak hysterical damsels in distress') as 'stupid' only makes it appear that you are unaware that feminist critiques of patriarchal culture go beyond 'rights for women' (Sheila's Wheels?) to analyse broader ideological structures and social imaginaries. Your article's framing assumptions that women are victims and men are not is itself a perfect re-assertion of those patriarchal attitudes you appear to want to combat. In short, your article read as sexist.
    I'm not sure if you're at all au fait with discussions in feminist theory; on the evidence of this article I rather suspect not. I shan't make any appeals to the authority of that vast body literature, but only suggest to you that you might find engaging with it in future rewarding, given your evident concerns. For the time being, please do not write any more articles like this; if one were in any doubt as to the jeuvenile phallocentrism of the games industry, faux-worthy articles like this remove all doubt. I'm sorry if this letter causes you offense, but as a standard-bearer for games journalism (which I feel Eurogamer is) who's engaged with these issues, it behoves you to treat serious issues seriously.

  • 8bitMofo #118 11 months ago

    The 'white male whinging' was the one that made me laugh the most.

    Keep living the Gaijin fantasy homie!

  • CaptainQuint #119 11 months ago

    @kenshin001

    I can tell you that my intelligent and easy going missus (she's a peadriatric nurse, as it happens) thinks it's all a load of nonsense. She's indifferent to it.

    Funnily enough, she said she'd probably get turned on if I threw her over my shoulder and slapped her arse.

    But that's just one woman, of course. She'd go ballistic if I did it to one of her friends.

  • RoOhDaMite #120 11 months ago

    "sexist neanderthals"

    So that's what I'm getting called now for having sense of humor. Damn it's hard to enjoy your hobby at times *rolleyes*

    By the way: respect the neanderthals!
    Latest genetical research shows we inherited quite a chunk of their genes as they interbred with sapiens sapiens, therefore we are the product of racial tollerance, and it is sad to see how the term neanderthal is getting missused in order to discriminate against people.

    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 12:40

  • jstar #121 11 months ago

    I think the article is a load of bollocks but this is the worst argument ever:

    'Gaming is still dominated by men, very few of whom would be even slightly offended by Duke's CTB mode.'

  • orakio #122 11 months ago

    If it were an article to score hits, they did succeed me thinks! 114 comments in half a day, for something that isn't a flame war between ps3 and xbox360?
    Well done.
    Or not, obviously.

  • crispyduckman #123 11 months ago

    "...is this cheap and slightly uncomfortable laugh really worth it?"

    Yes.

  • jstar #124 11 months ago

    Williambutlergates has won

  • jabberwoky #125 11 months ago

    Another politically correct thought fascist. This country is being utterly ruined by them. And its articles like this which will gradually over the years water down all videogame material till it offends no-one anywhere in the world. Is that what Eurogamer wants? People will be laughing at Duke's actions because he is so insensitive, such a caricature, its a joke. In the same way Alf Garnetts views are laughed at. The time to worry is when its not funny, not seen as a joke, just normal. Can't you see the difference?

  • kupocake #126 11 months ago

    "This is classic male behavior. Have a big argument and decide how women should be feeling about something. How sexist and old "fashioned is that?"

    Looks to me like it divdes opinion in pretty much the same way: [link url=http://jezebel.com/#!5785846/video-game-lets-play ers-slap-women
    ]http://je zebel.com/#!5785846/video-game-...[/link]

    Oh, because I like negatives, you guys are still all dicks.
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 12:25

  • linea #127 11 months ago

    To be fair, williambutlergates, I think if this thread establishes anything it's that the place for a nuanced debate on gender politics probably isn't in the comments thread for an article about Duke Nukem Forever.

    (It's in the Viva Pinata comments thread)

  • mcwildcard #128 11 months ago

    See, I think the media is seeing this how they want to instead of how out actually is, it's cheeky, but not the scandalous abuse they are making out.
    I punched an unarmed and unsuspecting woman square in the face on Mass Effect 2, as a scripted renegade action, which is far worse than a pat on the bottom. Didn't see the press going apeshit over that though...
    Leave Duke alone, he's a relic, with outdated morals in a story that was largely written back when gaming wasn't at all politically correct. Cut him some slack.

  • JodSUMO #129 11 months ago

    Won't somebody PLEASE think of the women? :'(

  • Hermiod #130 11 months ago

    @kupocake - You make your point by linking to the blog equivalent of Loose Women?

    Jezebel is a Gawker Media site. Gawker Media sites encourage their writers to write intentionally trolling articles as their writers are required to generate large numbers of page views in order to generate advertising.

    Jezebel's particular take on this is to post intentionally hyperbolic and rarely accurate articles intended to make its largely female readership angry. It's the oldest trick in the journalism for money book.

  • jimboton #131 11 months ago

    @jstar "And why the hell didn't you write this shitty sanctimonious article about Fable 3. Because in that you can take your wife to the woods and kill her. Oh, but John Clees narrates it so it's fine. "

    also, Duke Nukem is a 'mid range' game and so it deserves to die anyway. Fable 3 is intelligent and not at all daft 'AAA' stuff.

  • Bahamut_Zero #132 11 months ago

    Sad, sad article. Don't play the damn game if it's "offensive" Rob and stop bitchin' about it, ok...

  • MadDave123 #133 11 months ago

    I was all ready to post a big response with arguments and well thought out explanations. But in truth, I can't be bothered to waste my time.

    This thing is so blown out of proportion. Rob, get over yourself, seriously.
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 14:23

  • Hermiod #134 11 months ago

    @mcwildcard - Mass Effect had more of its fair share of similar criticism - remember Fox News' "Mass Effect lets you rape women" story?

    Compare that to the reality - a non-interactive cutscene where two people thrown together by a dangerous situation have entirely consensual sex.

  • crisotunity #135 11 months ago

    The really scary thing is the level of elitism evident in his twitter messages:

    "about 3 hours ago in reply to gamewank_jim
    robfahey @gamewank_jim The reaction to anything like this is always basically, "where's your sense of humour" or "it'd be fine if it was a man!"
    robfahey @gamewank_jim The latter of those arguments is particularly odious. Selfish, ignorant, fuckwitted white male whinging. Cunts."

    There is absolutely zero reflection! Also, lots of "whinging" about the fact tat no-one understands his higher intellect.
    Let's be clear: I am not defending this piece of crap vapour-ware which is obviously making a sorry land-grab for free publicity before the disaster that will be its release.
    I am not saying that Eurogamer is not the right place for this sort of criticism: getting 25-35 year old males to engage in this sort of discussion (misogyny, racism, etc) is a good thing and this website should do more of it. We are all way too casual (ie, apathetic): having critical faculties does not make you "boring" or less of a man (in fact, quite the opposite).

    Unfortunately, the case study was wrong, the writer's priorities are wrong and the article got lost up its own self-righteousness. If you want to take on weighty topics, deal with how violence is portrayed in major releases in a serious way (and in the process risk pissing off Activision and EA). Don't take it out on the most stupid boy in the class (who is seeking attention anyway)!

  • CrumpetBoy #136 11 months ago

    Maybe this article needed a counter-article. It seems too contentious for a single opinion piece...
    I can't believe they didn't just use inflatable women for flags anyway. Seems more in keeping with Duke somehow.

  • CaptainQuint #137 11 months ago

    Methinks Rob won't be reflecting one iota.

    Regretting, is a better word.

  • filipo #138 11 months ago

    Sounds like the writer's got a serious case of the Mondays.
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 12:48

  • kupocake #139 11 months ago

    "@kupocake - You make your point by linking to the blog equivalent of Loose Women?"

    Err, no. I make my point by pointing out that the comments thread to said article is as divided a range of opinions as we have here. Gawker media may be a hive of shitty linkbait, but the opinions are only as valid as they are here. They just tend to be phrased with a little less vitriol.

    Not that it was a point more than it was an observation.

  • hy4000uk #140 11 months ago

    the article with all its innacuracies and disingenuousness is bad

    the sycophantic pieces of shit who defend the article and the horrible man who wrote it are worse

    what's the point of writing an article then dismissing any criticism of it as misogyny (or other such bulllshit). fucking hack.

  • crisotunity #141 11 months ago

    @stop-gap
    +1
    Can we also ask Eurogamer to clarify whether "our readers are cunts" is now the official editorial position?
    I'm sure the advertisers would also be very interested.

  • RedSparrows #142 11 months ago

    Comments HERP DERP

  • hiddenranbir #143 11 months ago

    Cry about the movie industry too okay.

    I can't wait for this and I know my girlyfriends will actually find the humour in it, given the context that is DUKE NUKEM.

    Silly Rob Fahey.

  • ucankurbaga #144 11 months ago

    Anyone takes video games serious is fail

  • Stop-gap #145 11 months ago

    okay, i'm going to rewrite that post just as soon as i've dealt with these ants :(

  • koopa #146 11 months ago

    While I don't have anything morally against it, this part of the game sounds pretty idiotic, people who find that funny are sad, unless they're under 15. Then again, from what I've seen in the trailers, this whole game basically ponders to those who can't (legally) buy it, even though I like low brow humor if done well...

  • UKPartisan #147 11 months ago

    Piffle...It's a fucking game, sounds like FPS Kiss Chase. It would seem the writer has been reading too many Guardian editorials. I asked my partner for her view on it, she thought it was hilarious. Sod it, I'm off for a game of Kick the Gay.

  • Pacmaninov #148 11 months ago

    "It's a persuasive argument. It's also stupid and disingenuous. The slaughter of thousands by an improbable super-soldier is pretty blatantly within the realms of utter fantasy."
    I presume you abhor Operation Flashpoint? What you are saying is that the reinactment of killing people in a fantasy war senario is entirely removed from the real wars (and associated war crimes) that are taking place right now. (Note the wikileaks footage that makes COD unbelievably distasteful) Sexism has not been adressed by mainstream videogames, but the fact is that we have been desensatised to murder whilst holding a video game controller - for instance the mission in black ops, in which you slit vietnamese soldier's throats in their sleep (with the reward of an achievement) was frankly appauling. (Also note the achievement for decamating an entire village.) Most reviewers ignored this poor taste - its the grime that we expect from our top blockbusters.
    My point is that what you are refusing to admit is that murder and killing in video games is considered acceptable because it has always been that way.

  • linea #149 11 months ago

    Can I just point out that at no point does he say that the game should be banned, or that anyone shouldn't play it.

    He just says that he finds it offensive and retrogressive (fair enough) and his main point is that it's a bad idea from a business perspective to perpetuate the image of gaming as just being for teenage boys.

  • Hermiod #150 11 months ago

    @linea - It's also a bad idea to perpetuate the view of the Jennifer Aniston/Katherine Heigl style of romantic comedy as a genre solely for women yet still they do it with every release.

    Not every form of entertainment has to appeal to everyone.

  • Guildenstern #151 11 months ago

    "Significant minority"? Please. Misogynist shitstains make up pretty much 99% of posters on all gaming forums I read, including this one.

  • RobotRocker #152 11 months ago

    Duke Nukem is at least honest with how it portrays itself as a satirical ultra masculine fantasy and to be fair, more games need to be a lot more outward in how they do this. Duke is so over the top with it's nutshots, gratuitous nudity, sexualisation and that it immediately signals to the player that its parody and not to take it seriously. Contextualisation is important and if a game consistently reminds you that its so over the top, cartoonish and a videogame. Players will get it. Women get the Duke Nukem style easily as well. Especially if you do a feminist reading of it and see that its a game that takes all the elements of the male gaze and mashes them all together into one look into the male ID.

    Take another game for example, Saints Row 2. That game has the sense to immediately set it forth that the player is a complete monster who's only goal is to cause chaos and be an agent of anarchy to take over the city by doing over the top stunts like cutting up prostitutes with a chainsaw or dumping toxic waste in a gang leaders tattoo ink so you can give them face cancer. The game makes no bones in how immoral it is and consistently reminds the player of this. It works because its over the top nature is broadcast straight away and knows that the players base impulse in an open world is "Wreak havoc" and appeals straight to the ID.

    In a way, these games are intellectually honest. They signpost at the outset that they are satirical works and are videogames. Nothing more. Compare this to garbage like Homefront which pretends to be intellectually engaging and "Provoking" yet devolves into "The brown people are over the top evil and threaten your good ol' American way of life, shoot them". Yes, there will be a couple of anonymous mysoginist cretins, but by and large, they are the minority. There will always be people like the people who think MW2 supports their poisonous racist viewpoints (When its anything but and portrays the US as the aggressor in a lot of cases) or even worse, the fuckwits who trump that "Andrew Ryan is right" even after watching a deconstruction of the entire objectivist movement in BioShock. They are still a minority though, and the majority is not stupid like people like to think.

    Though sourcing the defence from noted shitheads Penny Arcade (who I used to have a lot of respect for before the "dickwolves" incident) isn't really a great source. At least its not king shithead Jim Sterling.

  • linea #153 11 months ago

    Hermiod: yeah, that's one sub-section of cinema though. Most (of course not all!) big cinema releases have a fairly sex-neutral, broad-based appeal. Core gaming (as much as I love it) is overwhelmingly dominated by appeals to the teenage male mindset.

  • jabberwoky #154 11 months ago

    Just been on the phone to Duke to get his take on all this. He said the article actually raised a serious point, and he was going to re-think his life.

  • humanchu #155 11 months ago

    I'm in total agreement with the article.

  • CaptainQuint #156 11 months ago

    @jaberwoky

    LMAO

  • Hermiod #157 11 months ago

    @linea - I don't disagree with you, but as a business that needs to make money in a ever more demanding market, there is a significant risk of alienating the people who pay your bills and put food on your table if you try to make everything so universally appealing.

    It's more sensible to target different audiences with different games. I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of those female gamers who apparently outnumber us males don't even own a system that Duke could be played on. Someone who spends a couple of quid on Angry Birds isn't necessarily going to spend Ł40 on a more involved game like Duke.

  • kinky_mong #158 11 months ago

    Wow, this article really is a new low for EG. Making a mountain out of a molehill.

  • williambutlergates #159 11 months ago

    I am quite shocked to read Rob Fahey's obscene and unprofessional comments via his public twitter feed (which link to this site), in which he describes his readership as an 'ignorant cesspool' and 'cunts'. It appears that I was mistaken to have given him the benefit of the doubt and attempted to engage with him. As Mr Fahey has apparently publicly stated that he makes it a point of principle not to read his readers' comments, it seems unlikely that such engagement would ever have been possible.
    I have written to Eurogamer to lodge a complaint at Mr Fahey's obscene and unprofessional conduct. and shall neither be reading any more of his articles in future, nor contributing further to the present discussion. For the sake of Eurogamer's journalistic standards, I would suggest that others do the same.
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 13:39

  • beastmaster #160 11 months ago

    The guy who wrote the article called the EG readershp a load of counts?

    Duke would approve!

  • Rorsch #161 11 months ago

    So this Duke Nukem will be mature... nice :/

  • linea #162 11 months ago

    Hermiod: oh, for sure.

    I don't think it's necessarily a matter of women/casual gamers versus male/core gamers though. I think it's a question of whether by including 'controversial' things like this (or the No Russian level in MW2) companies are potentially alienating a huge latent core gaming market who see all games as cast in that mold.

  • sega #163 11 months ago

    The Capture The Babe part of Duke Nukem Forever is as humourous to women as it is to men. If anything, the whole game is a parody of the teenage male's mind - women see this game and think "oh god, does my boyfriend/brother/classmate/workmate etc really think like that?". It makes fun of what teenage males think is cool and who they aspire to be - someone who they'll eventually realise is extremely lame as soon as they hit their 20's. However, by then they'll then see it on a similar level to women and can mock their younger selves.

  • Ptarmigandalf #164 11 months ago

    Gearbox dun goofed up.

  • Hermiod #165 11 months ago

    @linea - I personally believe that if games are to mature as an industry then they have to be free to take risks, push boundaries and make mistakes.

    As far as something like 'No Russian' goes, I've seen worse on an episode of 24.

  • SecretStage #166 11 months ago

    Although you will most likely not read this comment rob i will post it anyway

    To put it lightly you’ve really embarrassed yourself, also the aggressive tone of the article is not a good way of getting your opinion across and some of the comparisons are very silly.

  • Dangerous_Dan #167 11 months ago

    Since men and women are the same (both asexual biomass) they really rob themselves of revenue from potential female gamers. Heck, since everybody is the same they should all make more or less the same game. How stupid of them to go into a specific direction with their kind of humor.

    And for the misogynistic thing. Maybe it's just me but i think there used to be a time where it was outrageous and politically incorrect if a woman demanded to be treated equally. Nowadays it is politically incorrect if some people, in particular men, have opinions, desires and lives that differ from the idea how men are supposed to behave.

    But i guess there is no place for this kind of liberty in certain minds.
    Maybe they think: "It's dangerous because this kind of thoughts are what subjugated women for so many centuries..."
    I disagree... It's more about the people who can not sleep at night if someone has an opposing opinion.

    Let's hope there is still some space in the near future for masculine men and feminine women. They make a happy couple.

    And for the Duke, i think it's actually the opposite of "Girls like a slap from every man" - because it's a satire.

  • linea #168 11 months ago

    @Hermiod Oh yeah, I don't think anyone's arguing for censorship. I think that games companies should be free to produce whatever they want (I'd actually defend the right of companies to make stuff a hell of a lot worse than what actually gets made). I just wonder if they're slightly shooting themselves in the foot is all.

  • Mister-Wario #169 11 months ago

    "as a business that needs to make money in a ever more demanding market, there is a significant risk of alienating the people who pay your bills and put food on your table if you try to make everything so universally appealing".

    It's worked for Nintendo for long enough, hasn't it?

  • Hermiod #170 11 months ago

    @Mister-Wario - lol :-)

  • jstar #171 11 months ago

    Whoever gets to watch 'The Killer Inside Me' with Rob Fahey and witness him spontaneously combust with righteous indignation is a lucky motherfucker. Do us all a favor eh, youtube it.

  • PeacockDreams #172 11 months ago

    Wow! What a terrible article, i cant believe this was published

  • irve77 #173 11 months ago

    ~sigh~
    just painfully right on.

    I don't see how this mode is out of kilter with the rest of Duke Nukem. Not saying it's big of clever but it is Duke plain and simple.

    anyone buying duke has to have the mindset of a 14 yr old boy.

    If you really think that's degrading to women you should stay away from 90% of porn on the internet.

  • RoOhDaMite #174 11 months ago

    Dear Rob,
    Don't you think it is sexist to use the term "cunts" in order to discribe another persons attitude?
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 14:44

  • jstar #175 11 months ago

    @ afroofdoom

    Please tell me what message it sends.
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 14:42

  • RedSparrows #176 11 months ago

    Someone please explain to me quite what 'right on' is, as it seems to me that people can't say very much, without, VERY IRONICALLY, being shot down for it immediately, and being branded as either one or the other.

    If there's a problem across society in general, gaming included, it's rampant hypocrisy when it comes to the way we talk and debate, the terms we use and our attitudes - apparently it's bad to be of 'the PC herd', but not of the 'oh shut up, we all enjoy it' herd. I don't really see the qualitative difference. One just has tryhards, the other has lazy fucktards. What about the people in the middle who actually give a shit about something and think about it?
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 14:52

  • uknortherner2000 #177 11 months ago

    @PeacockDreams: "Wow! What a terrible article, i cant believe this was published"

    It was written for GameIndustry.biz - the same GameIndustry.biz who a couple of years back when the Mass Effect PC furore erupted published an article that basically referred to the average PC gamer as whiny, and self-entitled for expecting a game they paid good money for, to actually work without hidden installation limits or hardware-disabling DRM. Oh, and the same article also suggested that PC gamers should be grateful for being treated like shit too.

    I've always treated GameIndustry.biz as a site for self-absorbed, industry elitist pricks, and I see no reason to change my views now.
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 14:54

  • TriggerHippie #178 11 months ago

    Sorry Rob, but I've found you far more offensive today than anything the Duke has to offer.

  • irve77 #179 11 months ago

    @afroofdoom

    but isn't the whole concept of Duke a masogonistic neanderthol ?
    Surely capture the babe is no worse than any other part of the game.

    it's crass
    it's base
    and yes it's sexist

    but that is duke ALL of duke is sexist

    It's like buying manhunt and then complaining that it's violent.

  • butler` #180 11 months ago

    They use a stereotype for a laugh and you write a 2 page article? My girlfriend says you are a bit too sensitive!

    yea well Rob thinks your girlfriend is a selfish, ignorant, fuckwitted, white, male, whinging, misogynistic cunt.

    So there!

  • captain-future #181 11 months ago

    Gearbox' misstep with Duke's Capture the Babe mode is likely to raise hell - and rightly so.

    1. Duuuddde, relax. Should we really take games that seriously?
    2. The game clearly doesn't take itself seriously.
    3. When this is a problem, where was the outcry in the last 300, Kill Bill, Sucker Punch etc.etc. movies?

  • Gearskin #182 11 months ago

    Got to say I've really enjoyed this whole thing.

    But what happens when this DOESN'T cause a fire? And how comes a man is so hacked off, but there's no real commentary from the receivers of Duke-spank?

    And why does Rob assume the people who don't agree with him are white? There's so much to digest

  • RedSparrows #183 11 months ago

    Gotta love people asking their girlfriends what they think of a sexism article.

    'It's okay, the girl I know said it's cool! EVERYONE CHILL, SEXISM IS OVER'

  • TruSmiles #184 11 months ago

    I just want to say that ignoring issues in games just because they're a game i.e a form of entertainment isn't the right way to go. As much as games are entertainment, they're also apart of the bigger media picture shared by books, films and TV, all of which inspire and influence opinions of society. Underlying racist or sexist themes in media can translate over to real world attitudes, especially if you grow up on such media.

    That said, I see Duke Nukem as satirical and agree with posters stating that it does depend on the context. Sure, they'll be some idiots that take it to heart, there always is, but for the most part we're adults and we can judge for ourselves whether something is just humour or actually offensive.

    I'm a female gamer that actually really wants to play DNF just because it's completely over the top. How uncomfortable I will feel about the CTB mode will actually depend on the context of the 'slap' that is used.

    Edit: That said, I wouldn't want people telling me how I should feel about anything. I wouldn't class myself as a normal female anyway, so even if every single woman hated the game, I wouldn't necessarily agree with them. Ditto with men.
    Edited by 2 at 26/03/11 @ 15:08

  • coolbritannia #185 11 months ago

    Trolling article is trolling.

    The game mode is very much in keeping with the tongue in cheek nature of the game. A low point for EG, this.

  • Stop-gap #186 11 months ago

    Gotta love people asking their girlfriends what they think of a sexism article.

    *cough* Research? Different perspectives? That's more journalism than Rob did.

  • FenderMaster #187 11 months ago

    slapping a woman on the bottom... is it mysoginistic? yes it is, and in truth it's too stupid to be offensive

    is it in anyway related to domestic violence? no... domestic violence rarely equates to a slap on the arse

  • Retroid #188 11 months ago

    There's free speech and there's the responsibility which goes with it of not being too stupid.

  • coolbritannia #189 11 months ago

    Rob, I think your parents should have called you Dr Quinn, medicine woman. You panzy assed loser.

    (anyone spot the ref?)

    edit: I guess there's not many Talladega Nights fans on the boards....
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 17:06

  • irve77 #190 11 months ago

    @Retroid

    yes let us take away free speech from those too stupid to deal with the responsibly !

    oh
    wait ...
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 15:23

  • kentmonkey #191 11 months ago

    He's said on his Twitter account (linked to earlier on the first page by somebody) that he doesn't read the comments when his articles are posted on EG, as it puts him in a bad mood (paraphrasing) so those posting wanting a personal response probably shouldn't expect one.

    I'm not sure what's more offensive though to be honest; a playful slap on the bum (which isn't to be encouraged but in the context of everything without reaching for the hyperbole typewriter, probably isn't as bad and certainly no worse than killing loads of innocent people in GTA for example if we're going to get in the morality train) or responding to your audience's comments with a statement of: "The latter of those arguments is particularly odious. Selfish, ignorant, fuckwitted white male whinging. Cunts."

    Aside from the fact that I don't agree with the majority of your text, ignoring the fact that you've gone into hyperbole overdrive, overlooking the fact that I find your dismissive comparison between slapping a woman's bottom and killing thousands fairly shocking, I still think the way you have responded on your twitter account is unprofessional and dare I say it, slightly racist, even if unintentionally. Especially considering some of the comments have definitely been from women, and I would also expect people from many different races and colours are represented as well. And many more of them are neither selfish nor ignorant.

    In short, I think you've been rather pathetic about the whole thing from start to finish, actually.

    Still, it would have got EG lots of lovely hits and page refreshes, so you'll get a pat on the head all the same. Not on the bottom though. Because obviously you'd sue them for that.
    Edited by 3 at 26/03/11 @ 15:42

  • DrStrangelove #192 11 months ago

    Do you also write angry letters to Top Gear and South Park? Why do you hate people who like a stupid cheap laugh? Jeeth Chritht.

    If you think women won't play this because of "Capture the Babe", the same women wouldn't play Duke Nukem anyway.

    If you think people wouldn't take the slaughtering in CoD for real, you would be quite surprised just how many born-again redneck assholes do think shooting civilians in Iraq makes you an American hero.

    If you think "cheaper than your girlfriend" is not funny, you're actually right. But the current climate of eggshell crybaby political correctness shit makes it kinda funny.

    And if you think "Capture the Babe" is controversial or tasteless, have you ever played GTA?

  • DrStrangelove #193 11 months ago

    I also wonder: have you asked female DN3D players how they actually think about "Capture the Babe"?

  • photoboy #194 11 months ago

    Get off your high horse Fahey, it's just a funny mode in a game that has always been about lampooning the simplistic "rescue the princess" storytelling of the games industry. This is just as ridiculous as the complaints about racism in RE5 or that Fat Princess gives girls negative body images.

  • DirectAim #195 11 months ago

    I had a conversation last night about some of the big games that are being released this year, one of which is Duke Nukem, and I asked a friend which games he has played in the past year that actually have made him laugh! The only game he could think of is rag doll Kung Fu, I personally think that the games industry has lost it's fun appeal, obviously games are awesome and enjoyable and a game like skyrim is going to blow my mind away but it's not going to make me laugh like Duke Nukem, I think the gaming industry needs to be fun again and start making us laugh abit more!!!

  • konniehuqfan #196 11 months ago

    I like the way the author bleats about misogyny, then compares the Eurogamer readers to female genitalia - using a word that many women hate.

  • markopoloman #197 11 months ago

    What a completely OTT crappy article! Since when has Duke Nukem been about political correctness? If slapping a computer generated womans bottom in a game made for grown-ups is even slightly offensive, then I really don't think you have 'got' what this game is.
    As for the ad by Gamestation stating that whatever was cheaper than your girlfriend!!!!! That' actually still funny. Rob, I have to ask............ are you in fact ...... A woman? Sounds like it to me!

    Worst article on EG for years. Maybe ever!

  • hiddenranbir #198 11 months ago

    Rob would have a point if say, the woman slapping was in a game like Heavy Rain and that the character you were playing really hated women.

  • Dave52 #199 11 months ago

    Good article. I have to say the game hasn't interested me at all. Maybe if I was 13, but I'm not. I got negged to crap for saying this in another DNF story - I suspect I will again. Bring it.

  • andywilkie35 #200 11 months ago

    What is this pinko brigade article? Fucking hilarious shit!

  • rogueJT #201 11 months ago


    Rob is probably playing the devil's advocate/trolling here to flma eup a discussion.

    No oneelse could be making the ridiculous statements he makes in the article.

  • Raiftel #202 11 months ago

    "Rob would have a point if say, the woman slapping was in a game like Heavy Rain and that the character you were playing really hated women."

    No he wouldn't, because that would at least address the issue as problematic. The point he was making is that the videogame industry is largely male focused and stuff like this just reinforces that notion.

  • sirjambob #203 11 months ago

    Just had a little look at Mr Fahey's twitter feed...

    @robfahey maybe I'm just naive but I'm forever surprised at how pro misogyny the Eurogamer audience are.

    @gamewank_jim I don't read the responses to GI columns when crossposted to EG. Realised it was getting my Saturdays off to a bad start.

    @gamewank_jim I prefer to spend my weekends not *entirely* despising humanity, at least not before Sunday lunchtime.

    @gamewank_jim The reaction to anything like this is always basically, "where's your sense of humour" or "it'd be fine if it was a man!"

    @gamewank_jim The latter of those arguments is particularly odious. Selfish, ignorant, fuckwitted white male whinging. Cunts.

    Real nice

    [link url=http://twitter.com/robfah ey
    ]http://twitter.com/robfah ey
    [/link]

  • defdaz #204 11 months ago

    Suprised EG published this 'article' to be honest - unless they published it full knowing how many people would object to it.

    Rob comes across as horrifically prejudiced (backed up by his offensive and racist twitter comment) with comments like

    "unless you're a knuckle-dragging guffawing idiot who nods along appreciatively to Richard Littlejohn columns and likes saying things like "it's PC gone mad innit","

    He also seems to feel his opinion is law:

    "Gamestation's advertisement, at least, has the sense of an isolated mistake, even if it's compounded by failure to acknowledge the problem"

    How incredibly condescending! Gamestation fully understood what they were doing with the advert so it's only Rob's opinion that it was a mistake or a problem. Rob needs to get over himself.

    Rob also needs to understand that film, book and game are entertainment mediums where social issues can be aired - either for serious, dramatic or comedic effect. Sexist and racist characters are completely valid and help draw attention to these issues - the character's personality flaws can be shown graphically and allows the viewer / reader / gamer to contemplate and acknowledge these issues.

    In this case Duke's a sexist pig and while we can laugh about it (because of the comedic way it's done) it also highlights the issue and so can only be a good thing.

  • djed #205 11 months ago

    COUNTERPOINT (youtube.com)
    Edited by 2 at 26/03/11 @ 16:46

  • inutaihanyou #206 11 months ago

    It's Duke. He's a caricature of an overblown stereotype and his games are designed to reflect that. Now once people reconcile those facts the moral outrage should dissipate.

  • Stop-gap #207 11 months ago

    [link url=http://w ww.challengerappears.com/blog/about/
    ]http://ww w.challengerappears.com/blog/ab...[/link]

    "What do I do? I write words and do my best to sound intelligent for a living"

    uh-HUH

  • coolbritannia #208 11 months ago

    I think Rob Fahey is completely oblivious to the irony of his tweets: 'There are certainly days when I feel like inventing the Internet was just like giving a microphone to every village's idiot :)'

  • Sevens #209 11 months ago

    "It's a persuasive argument. It's also stupid and disingenuous."

    Ah, it's like this article then. Except that this article isn't persuasive. Well and their argument isn't stupid (but yours still largely is). Your unsubstantiated (see wise heads, statistics, isolated incidents, poor reasoning), yet overbroad criticism is hardly convincing. That aside, yes it's totally worth it to go for blind, yet utter and complete "political correctness" in each and every facet of life. To hell with satire. To hell with controversy. To hell with freedom. To hell with reason.


    P.S.:

    Rob Fahey (Twitter): "There are certainly days when I feel like inventing the Internet was just like giving a microphone to every village's idiot :)"

    You really shouldn't blame the inventors. You should just stop talking into it.
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 17:03

  • Eraysor #210 11 months ago

    Worst article in the history of EG. Duke without sexism is like the Bible without Jesus. It's an integral joke to the material.

  • coolbritannia #211 11 months ago

    EG, sack this arsehole, it's bad enough he's completely off the mark in the article itself, but his twitter feed shows nothing but contempt for your target audience.

    And i know if I come home from work and give my gf a playful smack on the arse she loves it, calling her a cunt however, would not go down well. So Mr Fahey, slapping a virtual character in a tongue in cheek videogame is worthy of saturday morning vitriol, but you calling us all cunts on a very public, very real twitter feed is fine is it?

    How about we write up the next article, about what a spasticated bellend you most obviously are?

  • metalangel #212 11 months ago

    A guy from a PR company was fired recently for swearing about Detroit motorists on Chrysler's Twatter feed. Specifically calling your readers cunts is worse than that, I reckon.

  • coolbritannia #213 11 months ago

    I know from time to time a meme can worm it's way into the internets of even EG. Well I propose the meme 'Rob Fahey is a cunt' as the sole response to every article he posts from now on.

    That's a big society i want to live in.

  • Link020 #214 11 months ago

    Totally agree with other comments, there is a big difference between a playful bottom slap and beating a woman. I also dont see how this is not pure fantasy like the example of most war fps's, Duke Nukem running around with a babe over his shoulder to score points sounds like fantasy to me wether or not he gives her a slap on the bum or not. All seems to be a storm in a tea cup to me.
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 17:07

  • jstar #215 11 months ago

    @ coolbrittania

    Did he really say that? That's amazing.

  • metalangel #216 11 months ago

    @jstar: link in comment 214 to his twatter.

    If I may posit:

    "Slapped Down"

    "Rob Fahey's misstep regarding Duke's Capture the Babe mode has raised hell - and rightly so."

  • jstar #217 11 months ago

    Someone please show Rob Anchor Man.

  • CaptainQuint #218 11 months ago

    Heh heh, looking at his latest tweets (for purposes of amusement), it is apparent that Fahey is as arrogant as he is foolish. He's trying to laugh it off, but we all know that inside he's had a MASSIVE knock to his whopper of an ego. He must be feeling bruised, the smarmy daft sod.

  • manveruppd #219 11 months ago

    Is this article SERIOUSLY equating a playful spank on the arse with battered wives? Really??? This is the stupidest thing I've ever read on Eurogamer!

    I'm sure there are plenty of women who've been the victims of violent abuse who would be horribly offended by this article, but I'm not gonna stick up for them because in my experience women don't want a guy to fight their fights for her - they find it mollycoddling and condescending. If the author seriously thinks that spanking a girl on the arse is the same as domestic violence, I suggest he visit his local police station in his journalistic capacity and try to investigate whether the kind of people who enjoy punching a woman until her face is unrecognisable, kicking her in the abdomen until her spleen ruptures, or putting out cigarettes on the skin of her breasts (horrible things which your local police would tell you have probably all happened within a 20 mile radius of his house within the past month!) are usually perpetrated by people who have pre-ordered DNF.

    If the above investigation doesn't result in a statistical correlation, then I can only suggest that he experiment by giving his other half a gentle smack on the rump - he might be surprised to find out that she will not find it offensive (as long as he doesn't do it in an inappropriate situation such as at a funeral), and might in fact take it as an expression of physical appreciation and playful desire, and decide to reward him accordingly with some TLC. (Which, going by the amount of anger and prudishness in this article, Mr. Fahey hasn't had in awhile.)

    I don't appreciate immaturity, racism and misogynism in the gaming community either, but I think reports of it are hugely exagerated. I've certainly experienced it to a far lesser degree than most people complain about, probably because I don't join guilds/clans full of annoying 14-year-olds (something I recommend that anyone who's also annoyed by such behaviour does). But just as statistics indicate there are far more female gamers than we commonly assume, the same surveys usually indicate that there are far more gamers in their 20s and 30s than teenagers. Rob Fahey's article seems to assume that all these mature, grown-up gamers with jobs, degrees, wives/girlfriends and in many cases children too are all women-battering scumbags who need to be told that smacking a girl around is bad.

    It's time we stopped being embarassed by a tiny but highly vocal minority of immature teenagers who just happen to be playing the same games as we. It's not our job to apologise to the rest of the world for them, it's not our job to raise other people's kids and turn them into nicer people, and it's not our job to stick around and listen to their swearing, misogynism, and racist comments, when all you need to do is join a gaming group full of more mature folks who don't put up with stuff like that. I'm sure that ANY sane, well-adjusted individual, whether they're a gamer or not, would take DNF for what it is: parody, and quite hillarious parody at that. They wouldn't assume that the person playing it hates pigs and wants to get it on with every stripper in New York. When writers for serious gaming websites start to spew faux moral outrage at what is basically COMEDY (ffs!!), I quite literally feel the bile rising in my stomach, because they reduce a vast plurality of gamers from all walks of life to the same level as its loudest and most obnoxious members!

    Duke Nukem is successful parody because it's so ridiculously over-the-top. Have you noticed how there's hardly ANY other human males in the Duke Nukem universe? Everyone is either an alien, a mutant, or a woman who needs saving. And if that is condescending towards women, implying they're completely helpless on their own (which it would be, if it weren't comedy), then it's doubly offensive towards men, who seem to have no existence whatsoever. We are completely helpless to take care of our loved ones, and must rely on Duke to do it for us. And Duke might ACT like a walking pile of misogynism and muscle, but for all his swagger and bravado he's in fact completely impotent, never actually getting any alone time with all the babes he even rescues or throws money at to catch a glimpse of pixellated breast. It's part of the comedy that the hero is always ALMOST getting lucky but never quite manages it, either because he has to rush off ("So many babes, so little time";) or because an alien monster chooses that moment to crash through a wall. Instead he has to get his satisfaction from shooting aliens and the knowledge of a job well done. No wonder all the women in the game are all over him - he's the only male in the game whom it's safe to be around!

    Rob Fahey's over-eager condemnation of non-existent misogynism strikes me as someone desperately trying to apologise for playing computer games for a living. But a games journalist wailing on Duke Nukem for being misogynist is like a writer in "New Scientist" wailing on "Tripping the Riff" for not taking space exploration seriously: it's parody, everyone knows it's not real, nobody thinks the characters are held up as role models for us to emulate, and everyone knows they shouldn't act like that in real life (and I'm sure the vast majority don't even want to either)! But even though it's immature, nobody takes it seriously, and nobody feels the need to apologise for enjoying it! The industry needs no moral arbiters, and the community needs no apologists: printing stuff like this is condescending in the extreme, both to gamers and to the women it's trying to defend.

  • Gearskin #220 11 months ago

    I don't mean to add fuel to this fire (I do) but I think it would be GREAT if we all sent http://www.girlgamer.com this article via Twitter. You can do that here: [link url=http://twitter.com/#! /girlgamer
    ]http://twitter.com/#! /girlgamer
    [/link]

    I honestly want some Girl Gamers to pipe in their thoughts. This article jumped to their defence for them. Do they feel there is anything to defend?

    Go!

  • coolbritannia #221 11 months ago

    Yes he did. I don't usually fall in with the mob mentality of 'outrage'. The Sachsgate affair for instance, I still think Brand and Ross were in the right, but I visit this site daily, I generate revenue on the ad clicks, I paid for the iPhone app, and for this cretin to post something that a) wastes 10 minutes of my life and b) then proceed to label me (as a member of the community) a cunt on a public forum has genuinely angered me.

    This was blatant filler, there is no substance to the article. It's badly researched, ill conceived, and his responses so far have been contemptuous.

    EG, I would like to see an official response to this and his subsequent tweets. As others have said, this really is the worst article in the history of EG.

    Fahey is also joking to Tom Bramwell about being CC'd in to the emails of complaint.

  • Hermiod #222 11 months ago

    @manveruppd - One small point, there are no men in Duke games as they've all been turned in to the Pig Cops you fight in the game - with the obvious connotations.

  • Sevens #223 11 months ago

    Link020: "Duke Nukem running around with a babe over his shoulder to score points sounds like fantasy to me wether or not he gives her a slap on the bum or not. All seems to be a storm in a tea cup to me."

    Nah, Rob probably just found his intellect to be underappreciated. So he decided to write an utterly stupid article. Then realized the flaw in this/his concept. Then started calling people cunts. All in all, the work of a mastermind.

  • O11Y #224 11 months ago

    @EG & Fahey. The way to make a point is not to attack half your readership. Sexism is rife in gaming, it is a serious problem, but this article is way off the mark. Perhaps you should take a break from bleating over a stupid game mechanic and try examining where the genuine problems lie in the industry.

  • soviet_ #225 11 months ago

    http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=oEt8Nv4fPPk

  • Anjaneya #226 11 months ago

    I was going to buy this game, but now I'm not.

    The comments on this thread indicate a total lack of awareness of the prevalence and nature of sexism in the world today. Its sad really.

  • coolbritannia #227 11 months ago

    Anjaneya, as Rob Fahey, learned intellectual and respected journalist would say, fuck off, you cunt. :0-)

    oh FFS, that's a dig at Rob, not the comment...
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 17:47

  • RedSparrows #228 11 months ago

    They might not necessarily betray a pervasive sexism per se, but they betray a pathetic amount of hypocrisy and hostility that descends only into the very 'ranting' they deem so heinous.

  • Mark1412 #229 11 months ago

    "I'm angry..."

    That much is clear ;)

  • crimsoneer #230 11 months ago

    WOMEN DO NOT NEED DEFENDING

  • Stompy #231 11 months ago

    INTERNET ASSHOLE MACHINE:

    Simply choose a response to the stimulus to be more of an internet asshole!

    Shutting a woman up by slapping her on the arse is acceptable because:
    a) It's only a joke, innit
    b) It's only a woman, innit
    c) It's political correctness gone mad, innit
    d) Anyone who disagrees is a Daily Mail journalist / pink commie / trying to impress a feminist bitch / random collection of mis-spelled vitriol, innit

    Repeat endlessly for infinite Internet Asshole points.

  • agparrot #232 11 months ago

    I can't say I'm in agreement with much of the content of the article overall, but it has inspired some very considered and intelligent posts in the comments here, so it has actually given me something worth reading, beyond the article, or the seriously ill-judged twatter comments.

    Still, I reckon Rob Fahey has almost now reached the intellectual level required to start posting on the actual EG Forum.

  • Stompy #233 11 months ago

    WOMEN DO NOT NEED DEFENDING

    BECAUSE THEY HAVE IT JUST AS EASY AS MEN:
    SAME PAY
    SAME LEVEL OF SEXUAL AND DOMESTIC ABUSE
    SAME OPPORTUNITIES IN LIFE

    WE ALREADY HAVE SEXUAL EQUALITY, IT IS PLAIN TO SEE.

  • Antsy #234 11 months ago

    @Mark1412

    Genuine lol

  • Stompy #235 11 months ago

    "...Croshaw really doesn't give a toss who he offends and that's the sign of a good writer...That's the sign of foward thinking..."

    Or is it the sign of someone who isn't pleasant or important enough to be hurt by being offensive?

  • jimr9999us #236 11 months ago

    A little bit of ass slap is good for the soul imho.

  • coolbritannia #237 11 months ago

    @ Stompy, do you always miss the point, or just on the internets?

  • Raiftel #238 11 months ago

    So you don't see the irony of saying

    " if he offends you that means you're most likely the twat with the issue! "

    After posting about 500 words about how angry you are.

  • SpaceMidget75 Verified Senior Software Developer, Minerva Computer Services #239 11 months ago

    Oh shit, I best throw my Evil Dead DVDs away then! Actually, I don't think I will because quite frankly I don't give a fuck what people think anymore. I'm tired of been told what an arsehole I am for being born and liking the things I like or laughing at the things I find funny.

  • Raiftel #240 11 months ago

    I don't think it's meant to be as much a direct correlation between DNF and Domestic abuse as it is about the attitude of having to calm a woman down via force. It's not the act itself in the game, but the mentality behind it. At least that is what I think he's saying. I think the article was trying to address the general boys club mentality in videogame.

  • afghan_jones #241 11 months ago

    This is just another in a long list of things that make me wonder why anyone wants to play this game other than as a curious relic. Just seems embarassingly shit. Maybe people who have a 'WKD side' might enjoy it I suppose.

    It's not so much offensive as it is cringeworthy and pathetic. It certainly isn't funny in the slightest and it's not entirely clear what it is supposed to be a parody of exactly.

  • ChrisPilote #242 11 months ago

    It all resumes to this : http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=DtcSYPjJbgg

  • Incarta #243 11 months ago

    If people are offended, they just won't buy the game. Do we really need an article like this?

    I won't be buying it. Not because of this, but because it's shaping up to be a crappy relic of a game.

  • irve77 #244 11 months ago

    I sometimes wonder if i should worry that i'm out of step with normal people.

    I enjoyed Tramadol Nights
    I thought JR & Russel Brand were fucking funny
    I thought Brass eye was funny as hell

    and i'm ready to admit i find Duke Nukem fun

    There should be no taboo in comedy.

    Duke might not be as well crafted as the rest but like the Pub landlord no matter how many people that think the views expressed are cool the vast majority are laughing at the character rather than with them.


  • Gaol #245 11 months ago

    We've had years of politically correct 'must please the womenfolk' shite in Edge, now we're having to suffer it in EG. Article makes me weep inwardly.

  • Sevens #246 11 months ago

    Anjaneya: "I was going to buy this game, but now I'm not.

    The comments on this thread indicate a total lack of awareness of the prevalence and nature of sexism in the world today. Its sad really."

    This really isn't the place for sarcasm.


    Zedfragg: "@Anjaneya

    What the fuck are you on?"

    Calm down a bit, Zed.


    P.S.:

    Stompy: "WOMEN DO NOT NEED DEFENDING

    BECAUSE THEY HAVE IT JUST AS EASY AS MEN:
    SAME PAY
    SAME LEVEL OF SEXUAL AND DOMESTIC ABUSE
    SAME OPPORTUNITIES IN LIFE

    WE ALREADY HAVE SEXUAL EQUALITY, IT IS PLAIN TO SEE."

    All caps needs no defending.
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 18:51

  • alan_stealth #247 11 months ago

    The guy who wrote this an idiot.

    Show me one other market that doesn't concentrate on it's core audience and selling to them, and when it comes to computer games, as in the market - it's still guys.
    So girls play games, and a few are hardcore - but on average compare how much is spent by boys, on getting the latest greatest game/console/joypad/DLC and that of girls - it's no contest.

    And I'm sure there will be a few exceptions, but alas this is the nature of statistics, but I would say it is a safe bet, that the market is still predominantly male.

    So Gamestations advert - spot on. It IS fucking cheaper than a girlfriend.
    (You know that right? Everyone has had a girlfriend right?)

    I don't even think that is particularly edgy.
    And I'm sure any girl looking at that, whether she's a "gamer" or not, doesn't get insulted or think its gone too far. I think she gets what it's saying, doesn't feel excluded or discriminated against.
    THAT would be political correctness gone mad.

    It's no more edgy than Yorkie adverts, or try basically ALL sport -
    which has a much larger proportion that could be potentially female.
    But sports remain as discriminate/sexist as ever.

    So stop trying to write about something which ain't there.

    DUKE portrays females no more stereotypically, then say they were portrayed in movies from 70's/80's (and even today) horror films - a helpless damsel in distress - that typically needs a man to help her.

    It might seem sexist - but only to the same kind of prat who thinks Manhunt went too far, and GTA is the devils work.


    The Suffragettes fought valiently for womens place in society.
    I seriously don't think Duke, or the attitude of the games industry, is a reason they should start "burning bra's" again.

    But I'm down, for any reason for removing of bra's :)

    (sorry.)
    (ed - the factual inaccuracy; yes the Suffragettes didn't burn bra's, for everyone who didn't know -
    but it was to set up my "punchline" - similarly to how the imagery was used before, coincidentally.)

    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 20:00

  • GiarcYekrub #248 11 months ago

    Duke Nukem is a game and franchise that knows its target audience, to suggest that DNF needs to cater to need of all gamer is equally absurd as suggesting the next SAW film be appropriate to all possible viewers. If you can accept that game audiences can be split by target age ranges then you also have to admit that some games are aimed at male gamers and others to women

  • TonyHarrison #249 11 months ago

    These articles from this writer published each weekend have been dropping in quality rather alarmingly lately. They've been filled with sensationalist spin of the most trivial statements or events to distort the truth in a blatant attempt to court controversy and rile up the fanboys, with complete and utter contempt for factual reporting.

    I hope for the good of this website, that this article represents this decline bottoming out, because I would hate to imagine how low you will go if you continue this downward spiral after this pathetic excuse of an article. I expect better from EG because of what has gone before, but with things like this, you are rapidly moving away from what attracted myself (and others, I imagine... based on the reaction) to this website, and as such I may find myself rapidly moving elsewhere...

  • DrStrangelove #250 11 months ago

    Dudes calm down. I'm heavily opposed to Fahey's point of view myself (you may have read my comments), but don't blatantly insult him and demand his sacking, that's a bit off the scale, isn't it? I can see how someone who's (over?)sensitised to sexism is offended by CtB, even if I disagree.

    I'm glad there are disagreements about stuff. We should all be able to deal with such disagreements in a somewhat civilised way.

  • man.the.king #251 11 months ago

    Rob Fahey seems to assume that this one game is somehow representative of the entire games industry - that's a very large assumption to make.

  • Mayhem64 #252 11 months ago

    It's a videogame. Thinking that doing this within the game should carry over into the real world is just the same as the slaughter of thousands within other FPS, paying for a hooker and killing her in GTA, and running around swallowing pill in Pac-Man. Essentially if you are stupid, retarded or dumb enough to believe that what you do in a videogame should carry into the real world, then there's no hope. Most sane, sensible people know the context and won't be doing that.

  • ExplodingClown #253 11 months ago

    @alan_stealth:

    Suffragettes didn't burn bras. That was a stunt pulled by a magazine publisher who hired a bunch of models to do it in the 70's.
    Suffragettes planted bombs and burned down politicians' houses.

    And I doubt many who cross the threshold of Gamestation wash often enough to attract a girlfriend.

  • Stompy #254 11 months ago

    Essentially if you are stupid, retarded or dumb enough to believe that what you do in a videogame should carry into the real world, then there's no hope. Most sane, sensible people know the context and won't be doing that."

    Sane, sensible people won't:
    care so little about education that they fail all their exams
    become drug addicts
    abuse children

    So therefore these aren't problems either.
    You reply that not everyone is sane and sensible, which is why we need police and prisons.
    I then reply that people who are not, by your definition, 'sane and sensible' will have opportunity to play this game and have it reinforce their non-sane, non-sensibile belief that slapping women is acceptable.

    While you mull this over, please re-read this part of Rob's article again so that you do not continue to blatantly miss the point:
    The slaughter of thousands by an improbable super-soldier is pretty blatantly within the realms of utter fantasy. Slapping women? That's something which, sadly, happens every day in countless households around the world. There's no funny, goofy way to give a player - playing as an all-American hero - a button which slaps a woman to calm her down, because there's no way to do it without reinforcing the basic and sadly still widely held view that this is an acceptable thing to do.

  • Praetorianer #255 11 months ago

    Reading the article I couldn't help myself thinking "hypocrisy" all the time.

  • Stompy #256 11 months ago

    So Gamestations advert - spot on. It IS fucking cheaper than a girlfriend.
    (You know that right? Everyone has had a girlfriend right?)

    Games are also cheaper than having a baby, or nursing your disabled mother. This is truth. However, the perceived insult is if you argue that games are better than doing this, and an adequate replacement.

    If you think it is amusing to negatively compare girlfriend to gaming, you deserve neither.

  • Stompy #257 11 months ago

    Reading the article I couldn't help myself thinking "hypocrisy" all the time.

    Why, because Rob has smacked your ass to shut you up? Bullshit.

  • jstar #258 11 months ago

    Well Stompy that's bollocks isn't it. Because when I play Duke Nukem Forever I won't finish it and then suddenly start thinking it's ok to slap women to calm them down. I don't think that's ok now, nor will I afterwards. I will never think it's ok. So apparently there is a way to:

    'do it without reinforcing the basic and sadly still widely held view that this is an acceptable thing to do'.

    All Rob shows by writing this is his inability to separate the fantasy setting of a game with reality. Because clearly just reading about Duke Nukem Forever made him want to turn wife beater.

  • JetSetWilly #259 11 months ago

    I can only imagine that Tom Bramwell agreed to publish this out of a misguided sense of deference to a former colleague. I can't believe that had he received such utter fucking tripe from someone trying to get into games "journalism" he would given it the time of day.

  • jstar #260 11 months ago

    And the gamestation advert is funny because it;s reflective of a well know and actually quite fond cliche about having a girlfriend. There is no malice in it at all.

    My girlfriend's response to seeing it (I showed her this article) was:

    'Gamestation doesn't suck your cock though does it?' And she can say that because she's a strong, intelligent and independent woman with her own mind who isn't so insecure in herself that she will take offense at something so pathetically irrelevant.

  • electrolite #261 11 months ago

    "WOMEN DO NOT NEED DEFENDING

    BECAUSE THEY HAVE IT JUST AS EASY AS MEN:
    SAME PAY
    SAME LEVEL OF SEXUAL AND DOMESTIC ABUSE
    SAME OPPORTUNITIES IN LIFE

    WE ALREADY HAVE SEXUAL EQUALITY, IT IS PLAIN TO SEE."


    The bar for 'most moronic comment on Eurogamer ever' has been moved up a notch or two

  • electrolite #262 11 months ago

    Fahey would probably be pissing himself laughing at the majority of comments on here-they're certainly proving wrong any cliché's about gamers.....

  • CatWeazle #263 11 months ago

    Get a grip.. Its ass-slapping, not wife-beating! It sounds like its just a bit of saucy Carry-On humour, and I really can't see why the author of this article is getting so self-righteous about it.

  • carlitoswagon #264 11 months ago

    Rob has increased my want for this game even more. The fact it upsets an obvious prat makes me want to play Babe Mode until my fingers bleed.

    Grow some balls Rob. You are obviously dreaming of a society where we walk around all day wrapped in cotton wool and hugging eachother.

  • CamberGreber #265 11 months ago

    O! SHUT UP EUROGAMER.

    For God sakes how many of these blatant (filler) Articles do we have to up with.
    I would rather visit this site and see nothing new then see garbage articles like this.

    O and we don't need this constant (how can i make this simple point take as many paragraphs as possible) approach to writing.

  • alan_stealth #266 11 months ago

    "So Gamestations advert - spot on. It IS fucking cheaper than a girlfriend.
    (You know that right? Everyone has had a girlfriend right?)

    Games are also cheaper than having a baby, or nursing your disabled mother. This is truth. However, the perceived insult is if you argue that games are better than doing this, and an adequate replacement.

    If you think it is amusing to negatively compare girlfriend to gaming, you deserve neither."

    @ Stompy

    Interestingly though - I get both.

    Clearly the whole concept behind the marketing was exactly that - and your saying this is wrong?

    Don't enjoy Frankie Boyle I take it then?

    Get a life mate.

  • Daddy-Doom-Bar #267 11 months ago

    I can see his point, but I can't see how anyone would really be offended by it. It is, however, another bullet in the weapon of idiotic scare mongerers, and this article will even egg on those who will be quick to make it look like Gearbox are inciting or condoning domestic violence.
    I think it should be removed, but not because it will offend, but its just not worth the hassle of yet another 'video games are bad, m'kay?' shower of c***s blathering on about how evil games are.

  • the_sas_man #268 11 months ago

    I'd argue and say gaming has empowered women long before other media.

    Look at the original metroid, or more recently Laura Croft.

    Pathetic article and the most important thing that he fails to mention is that this game will get a BBFC rating. Those who shouldn't be buying it won't.

    Would Rob like to watch a Clockword Orange and explain to me it's depravity. I'd like to explain to him it's 18 rated. There are laws to protect people from this sort of content. If you buy it you know what to expect. Barring that there is something called Free Will.

  • sabbede #269 11 months ago

    This is a case of a bloke trying to show off to the ladies just how sensitive and sex-worthy he is.
    Duke's misogyny is funny.

  • sanctusmortis #270 11 months ago

    Wow. You guys are just the continuing proof he's right, aren't you.

    Sorry, but Duke took this long because he's a dinosaur. The best way to resurrect him was to modernise, not fetishise. I was never interested, and I'm even less interested after all the coverage. It's a time capsule to a time I don't want back.

  • CrispyLog #271 11 months ago

    Imagine the uproar if you could play as a woman in multiplayer, meaning the other players would be able to kill a woman in a game! That'd be horrible. Luckily you're just men instead and everyone knows it's ok to kill men, that's what war has been built on for hundreds of years. How dare the Duke slap a woman when there are men to be killed!

  • midnight_walker #272 11 months ago

    FHUTA instead. That'll learn 'er.
    Edited by 1 at 26/03/11 @ 20:20

  • coolbritannia #273 11 months ago

    sanctusmortis, we better burn all the carry on films too eh, and partridge, and anchorman, and while we're at it we better ban modelling, male and female, as it objectifies the body.

    i can't begin to fathom how pathetic anyone defending Rob's world view here must be.

  • mazk #274 11 months ago

    You lost me when calling the realistic military shooter Call of Duty pure fantasy, and referring to a point in DUKE NUKEM, the game where an improbably proportioned wisecracker shoots space pigs in strip joints as reaslistic.

  • curtlikesmeat #275 11 months ago

    BUT DARKFALL WAS AWESOME, SCREW YOU!!!111

    Oh wait sorry wrong thread. I'll get my coat.

  • ForozM #276 11 months ago

    DOOOOOOOOOOUK!

  • metalangel #277 11 months ago

    @sanctusmortis: Yes, I remember the long, bitter struggle over the last 15 years, but thankfully sexism was finally eradicated. Last Tuesday, in fact.

  • ari0ch #278 11 months ago

    um... I cannot believe I just read this article on EuroGamer... Shouldn't you go back and write some mroe pieces for the Daily Mail?

  • zubnut #279 11 months ago

    newsflash... rob fahey appointed daily mail's new sub-editor of moral outrage!

    fuckoff and get a sense of humour as well as perspective. last one of your pieces i ever bother reading.
    there's more important shit going on in the world than a "joke" in a game about a redneck sexist mysoginist chauvinist gun-toting anti-hero.

  • bf #280 11 months ago

    EGs misstep with an article that plays to twisted moral standards drives away readers en mass - and rightly so.

  • Kaminari #281 11 months ago

    If Duke Nukem is offensive to women, then what to think of Bayonetta? Catching the Babe is not more sexist to me than femme fatale Bayo castrating male "angels" by the thousands. And why would Duke need to cater to a specific female audience anyway?

  • Stompy #282 11 months ago

    Don't enjoy Frankie Boyle I take it then?
    Get a life mate.

    Thanks for this amazing piece of argumentation - I'll use it next time someone doesn't like something that I like. "You don't enjoy mushrooms? Get a life mate."

    It's a wonder that anyone has a life at all, isn't it?

  • coolbritannia #283 11 months ago

    I don't understand how in this article Rob 'Jeremy Kyle' Fahey can say there are more and more women in the industry when 4 or 5 months ago another one of his articles was bemoaning the lack of women in the industry.

  • Stompy #284 11 months ago

    Why are people equating feminism with Daily Mail moral outrage? It's like they aren't aware that the Daily Mail's Femail section is deeply conservative about sexual politics and generally exists to make women seem inferior, rather than equal.

    This is what you'd expect from a newspaper that famously proclaimed "Hurrah for the Blackshirts".

  • neonxaos #285 11 months ago

    I see no misstep. I do wish they made a feminist game in the same spirit, though, in which a woman got to lay down the law on the men - that would balance things out, and it would be really fun to play as well. All I'm saying is we need to chill out. Fantasy is fantasy, and that is what Duke was always about.

  • Stompy #286 11 months ago

    I don't understand how in this article Rob 'Jeremy Kyle' Fahey can say there are more and more women in the industry when 4 or 5 months ago another one of his articles was bemoaning the lack of women in the industry.

    I can help here - you don't understand because you don't get simple mathematical principles.

  • CrispyLog #287 11 months ago

    Hold on, I don't recall anyone kicking off about the CTF mode in Gears of War 2 when you have to shoot a civilian man and then hold him hostage and carry him back to your base. Apart from the fact that this is disrespectful to hostages (especially in light of Gadaffi using civilian meat shields to stop the UN bombing his compounds) it is surely a lot more horrific and violent than the Capture The Babe mode in DNF. I guess a woman getting slapped into submission is more horrible than a man getting shot into submission, what a sexist world we live in.

  • Stompy #288 11 months ago

    i can't begin to fathom how pathetic anyone defending Rob's world view here must be.

    Perhaps you are entirely clueless as to what Rob's world view is. The fact that you equate it with banning the Carry On films is evidence that you might be.

  • Stompy #289 11 months ago

    I guess a woman getting slapped into submission is more horrible than a man getting shot into submission, what a sexist world we live in.

    I'm sure that various people would complained about the game making light of hostage situations if they were more aware of it. Because if you had somehow been involved in such situations yourself, you might not see the funny side.

    And this is exactly the same reason why Rob finds slapping a woman to be in bad taste. To quote the salient argument yet again:
    The defence, already mooted very publicly by hugely popular webcomic and arbitrator of gaming taste Penny-Arcade, is that hey - in Call of Duty you slaughter thousands, so how is slapping a girl to calm her down in Duke Nukem Forever "offensive"?

    It's a persuasive argument. It's also stupid and disingenuous. The slaughter of thousands by an improbable super-soldier is pretty blatantly within the realms of utter fantasy. Slapping women? That's something which, sadly, happens every day in countless households around the world. There's no funny, goofy way to give a player - playing as an all-American hero - a button which slaps a woman to calm her down, because there's no way to do it without reinforcing the basic and sadly still widely held view that this is an acceptable thing to do.

  • Haoshiro #290 11 months ago

    I think your making way too big a deal out of this, it's not abuse, it's a slap on the butt. American Football players do that to each other all the time.

    I told my wife about the game mode and she thought it was funny. It's not a slap in the face, or a whip to the back, and it shouldn't be taken out of context so badly; I'm sure there are much more offensive things in the game then this anyway!

  • ken8mac #291 11 months ago

    Okay, is it just me, or does anyone else think Stompy is in fact Rob Fahey (or at least a mate!)?

  • Jolly_Armadillo #292 11 months ago

    My own girlfriend has given her opinion on the article (or more specifically the CTB spanking).

    She has in the past been victim to domestic abuse and thus is the type rob is "defending". She agrees with commentators that a spank is completely different to domestic abuse and it's just a game anyway. Most importantly in no way does she feel offended by it.

    Why is this article even justified by being posted on this site?

  • Zpardi #293 11 months ago

    Your article is insightful and well written, and has some points of high merit. However, I take exception to your 'within the realms of fantasy' theory. You argue that in games like Call of Duty you slaughter thousands, and therefore it is excluded to a realm of fantasy...yet you complain about sexism in 'Duke Nukem', a franchise built on tongue in cheek humor, alien pig-men invaders, and a massive blonde dude on roids who rattles off one liners faster than he can empty a minigun. Seriously?

  • Stompy #294 11 months ago

    Okay, is it just me, or does anyone else think Stompy is in fact Rob Fahey (or at least a mate!)?

    I have no idea who Rob Fahey is - in fact, I have the odd idea he is a fat blond dude like Chris Farley, but not dead.

    However, there is a history of domestic abuse in my family, which I witnessed first-hand, and I would call myself a feminist.

  • Stompy #295 11 months ago

    For you, Zpardi, I will quote the article for a third time:

    There's no funny, goofy way to give a player - playing as an all-American hero - a button which slaps a woman to calm her down, because there's no way to do it without reinforcing the basic and sadly still widely held view that this is an acceptable thing to do.

  • RingoDX #296 11 months ago

    I'm really quite disturbed by the amount of people who are quick to condemn Rob's article as 'political correctness gone mad'. He raises the important issue of the responsibility of the developer, and whilst it could be argued that this kind of gender treatment would be overlooked in a film, or that Duke Nukem is not meant to be taken seriously, surely for an industry so deeply steeped in sexism, a little tact is called for. How are games ever to be taken seriously if they can't grow up? It's a little too soon for satire yet...

  • metalangel #297 11 months ago

    @RingoDX: One game being a bit immature no more condemns the rest of the industry than an immature film, book or TV show.

  • Lycanthroat #298 11 months ago

    Interesting article, raises some fair points - wrong game to talk about misogyny! Duke Nukem is a love/hate game, but I do think it's harmless fun. I don't think the developers means anything sinister by it. I agree that this sort of thing should be left in the past though - the games industry has grown up a little bit, right. Right?

    Also - being a female gamer - can I just say some of the comments you lot are making about your generalised view of women in this thread are pretty moronic? Apparently I love Ł1 iPhone games whilst the boys like "proper" games like Black Ops (some twit posted a while back). Tact, dear, tact.

    And always remember - blow it out your ass ;)

  • Stompy #299 11 months ago

    It's the reaction from EG readers more than the game itself which is shocking.

  • Ryze #300 11 months ago

    I guess that all of the readers here are hardcore white male gamers.

    I'll just wait and see how the game turns out.

  • ucankurbaga #301 11 months ago

    i find people amusing when they take video games seriously...

  • coolbritannia #302 11 months ago

    Stompy is either Rob's friend or a bleeding heart type with a victim mentality.

    Domestic violence is prevalent in many families, there must be at least a dozen people in this thread who have witnessed it. i myself learnt to fight to stop my step dad slapping my mum when he came home drunk almost every other night, but I learned that there is such a thing as perspective, and if you think a tongue in cheek game mode in a tongue in cheek game is in any way linked to, leads to, or is reflective of domestic violence you need counselling.

    I suppose GTA leads to prostitution and a life of crime does it? And you are consistently missing the point Stompy. Perhaps you could explain to us how this is different from a Carry On films portrayal of women?

  • coolbritannia #303 11 months ago

    Look at what you're missing out on Stompy!

  • Stompy #304 11 months ago

    "I suppose GTA leads to prostitution and a life of crime does it?"

    Of course it doesn't - I'm a psychologist, a teacher, and I've taught students about the relevant research.
    However, I have seen students who are already part of a gang culture use GTA as a rationalisation for what they do. Along the lines of, "everyone knows about it, so what's wrong with it?" The subculture is entering into the mainstream and members of that underculture react, for example by perceiving the legitimatisation of their activities.

    The problem with this game mode is it is anachronistic and crude. If someone remade the Carry On films now, straight-up and without any knowing irony, it would be pointless and out-of-step with the modern world. I feel that this article makes the same point about this game. Surely we've moved on from finding this level of sexism amusing? Women are not passive objects to be subdued by heroic men, and the faster we stop representing them as such, the better we can address macho subcultures that lead to, amongst other things, domestic violence.

    Al Murray, pub landlord, is a hilarious comic character, lampooning thoughtless working class xenophobia by coming from outside that culture (he went to public school). But, at the same time, I know of people that have seen him live and reported a contingent of pissed racists that don't realise it is a joke. They see the popularity of a xenophobic comedian as vindication for their own attitudes, even though the xenophobia is itself the joke.
    I don't think that Duke Nukem is saved by this level of irony: if you like the idea of slapping a woman on the ass to shut her up, you're not missing the point. And if you already think that this is acceptable in real life - and we both know too many people do - no-one is around to tell you otherwise.

  • zedzee #305 11 months ago

    The analogy in the article is inaccurate, to say the least. The reporter dismisses the slaughter of 'soldiers' in other FPS, like COD, as being impossible - when really, that's exactly what so-called coalition forces are doing right now in Libya.

    The reporter seems to dismiss one side of his own argument, while upholding the other!

  • BBIAJ #306 11 months ago

    @coolbritannia:

    Best. Video. EVAR!

    *promptly favourites it*

  • Stompy #307 11 months ago

    "The reporter dismisses the slaughter of 'soldiers' in other FPS, like COD, as being impossible..."

    Yes, that's exactly what he means as he makes another point entirely.

  • BBIAJ #308 11 months ago

    Wow, 322 before the first true spambot post, incredible!

  • Gizzle #309 11 months ago

    Seems to me like the perfect lefty sensationalist counter to the righty sensationalist "Littlejohn" affirmation to tip the scales....Still buying it mind, being a responsible adult who can tell the difference between crass in jokes and spousal abuse.

  • coolbritannia #310 11 months ago

    "The reporter dismisses the slaughter of 'soldiers' in other FPS, like COD, as being impossible..."

    Yes, that's exactly what he means as he makes another point entirely.

    So wherein lies the rub Stompy? His point about slaughtering thousands as improbable is still shooting people. Dragging babes back and spanking them is still a spank. It's improbable that this would happen en masse as well is it not?

    The entire logic of the article falls apart, you just won't admit it.

  • coolbritannia #311 11 months ago

    ' If someone remade the Carry On films now, straight-up and without any knowing irony, it would be pointless and out-of-step with the modern world.' Agreed, except Duke Nukem is ALL about the irony.

    'They see the popularity of a xenophobic comedian as vindication for their own attitudes, even though the xenophobia is itself the joke. ' - So what? We're laughing at them. Anyone can twist anything if they wish to, chavs may laugh at little britain 'am i bovvered' character not realising it's about them. What do you want to do, ban everything just in case?

  • coolbritannia #312 11 months ago

    Though it does amuse me googling this and finding blog posts and news articles saying this article says more about the state of Rob's personal life than it does the game. What an own goal for EG.

  • kaya08 #313 11 months ago

    I don't know,
    The previous game walked a fine line and stayed on the adolescent fun side.
    This sounds like its ... stepping on the wrong side of the line, mostly due to the 'calming down' aspect as opposed to the ass-slapping aspect..
    I expect its a lot more likely to make me cringe than giggle.

    Good article ... with a predictable response.

  • coolbritannia #314 11 months ago

    A predictable, common sense response. You make it sound like we're all wife beaters.

    having read the comments thread at games industry.biz now, I am of the firm opinion that Rob really did write this to try and impress someone. Less than half of the industry comments there are supporting him, and half of the women posting there disagree with him outright. Rob has clarified his article but it's just more bollocks so far as I can tell:

    I'm not going to respond individually to all of the points raised here, not least because a lot of them repeat themselves, but there are a few things that I think need to be clarified in this discussion.

    Firstly, please stop drawing comparisons between playfully slapping your girlfriend/boyfriend/whatever on the backside on one hand, and the action of hitting a woman to calm her down on the other. There is no equivalence here, and it's pretty jaw-dropping to see how many people seem to be willing to try to grasp at this straw. One of those actions is a sexual act between consenting adults. The other is a non-consensual violent act against women which, thanks to countless media portrayals in the not-so-distant past and a strong societal reinforcement, still resonates strongly enough to be a basis for domestic abuse. Moreover, the act of hitting a woman in this way carries absolutely immense historical and societal baggage, and has to be considered in that light.

    Secondly, yes, Duke Nukem is absolutely a sexist game with pretty juvenile humour, and that's part of the appeal. I don't want Gearbox to take out the strippers, or his various adolescent appreciative comments about babes, or whatever, any more than I want them to take out the pig-cops or the toilet humour. That stuff's all a part of Duke, and it's childish and stupid - but it takes a pretty serious sense of humour failure to seriously object to it. I'm not writing for The Border House (thank god). What I'm having trouble with - what I'm finding momentously stupid and pointlessly offensive - is the 50's-esque "slap the hysterical woman to calm her down" action. Do I need to clarify, here, that this wasn't in Duke 3D? That what I'm suggesting, at this point, isn't actually removing something - it's just not putting it in in the first place?

    Third, I'm not buying the satire argument right now. If the game turns up and it's actually a clever, tongue-in-cheek puncturing of Duke's whole chauvinist, muscle-bound, cigar-chomping schtick, then hats off to Gearbox - I'll apologise for misreading the situation in a heartbeat. But as it stands, Duke is the hero. The hero, the praise-worthy planet-saving hero, is hitting women to calm them down. That's not satire, and I don't think the finest animator on the planet could tweak the keyframes of that sequence to make it sufficiently "goofy" as to rinse it of basic, pointless offensiveness.

    Finally - to the commenter who accused me of writing this purely to drive traffic... That would be a bit of an odd approach to take on a site that recently explicitly restricted its readership to those involved in the industry! Moreover, I've been writing these columns every week for six or seven years - if I was going to crack and start hitting up the Daily Mail headline generator in a desperate bid for traffic, I think it would have happened long ago. Feel free to disagree with and debate the opinions herein, but believe me when I tell you that they are absolutely my own.

    edit: my hopefully last word on the subject: I will never take anything Rob Fahey writes about seriously ever again. Somebody take the internet off of this village idiot. Goodnight, I'm off to punch the Mrs in the ovaries until she takes me to pleasuretown in that dirty whore mouth.
    Edited by 1 at 27/03/11 @ 02:19

  • stryker1121 #315 11 months ago

    You're on a slippery slope here, Mr. Fahey. You're equating ass-slapping w/ truly heinous acts of abuse. CTB mode is certainly silly and immature but the leap you're taking deflates the entire discussion. Why not interview actual girl gamers and get their take on the mode? I'd find that much more interesting than what's presented here.

  • kaya08 #316 11 months ago

    "slap the hysterical woman to calm her down"

    Heres the part i agree with him on and the basic central argument.
    I guess watching some fucker beating the turd out of his wife a couple weeks back in the pub while shouting 'calm the fuck down' makes me a bit sensitive but whatever.

    If he ran around slapping hookers on the ass for no reason other than he likes slapping hookers on the ass, i doubt there'd be an article (and certainly not a point).
    Its doing it to calm her down that i take issue with.

  • varsas #317 11 months ago

    "coolbritannia: Agreed, except Duke Nukem is ALL about the irony."

    Is it? The game has been mentioned in the EG podcasts and it doesn't sound like that game was made in that way. Rather that's the idea Gearbox are trying to sell.

  • gjgjg #318 11 months ago

    So this is where the party is at!
    ...tumbleweed...
    /reserves judgement on how offensive it is based on actually playing the game. *Will not be offended if said offences are presented in sufficiently satirical context, as with any offensive satire*. Offense at this stage is always slightly sensationalist.
    //finds comparison comments about COD being fantastical (and therefore disingenuous) baffling, especially considering COD is intended to be semi realistic and based on actual wars of recent decades where the deaths of poor nonUSAians is massively disproportionate.

    Either way... I thought this worth reposting: response to comments on GI.b by authour:

    I'm not going to respond individually to all of the points raised here, not least because a lot of them repeat themselves, but there are a few things that I think need to be clarified in this discussion.

    Firstly, please stop drawing comparisons between playfully slapping your girlfriend/boyfriend/whatever on the backside on one hand, and the action of hitting a woman to calm her down on the other. There is no equivalence here, and it's pretty jaw-dropping to see how many people seem to be willing to try to grasp at this straw. One of those actions is a sexual act between consenting adults. The other is a non-consensual violent act against women which, thanks to countless media portrayals in the not-so-distant past and a strong societal reinforcement, still resonates strongly enough to be a basis for domestic abuse. Moreover, the act of hitting a woman in this way carries absolutely immense historical and societal baggage, and has to be considered in that light.

    Secondly, yes, Duke Nukem is absolutely a sexist game with pretty juvenile humour, and that's part of the appeal. I don't want Gearbox to take out the strippers, or his various adolescent appreciative comments about babes, or whatever, any more than I want them to take out the pig-cops or the toilet humour. That stuff's all a part of Duke, and it's childish and stupid - but it takes a pretty serious sense of humour failure to seriously object to it. I'm not writing for The Border House (thank god). What I'm having trouble with - what I'm finding momentously stupid and pointlessly offensive - is the 50's-esque "slap the hysterical woman to calm her down" action. Do I need to clarify, here, that this wasn't in Duke 3D? That what I'm suggesting, at this point, isn't actually removing something - it's just not putting it in in the first place?

    Third, I'm not buying the satire argument right now. If the game turns up and it's actually a clever, tongue-in-cheek puncturing of Duke's whole chauvinist, muscle-bound, cigar-chomping schtick, then hats off to Gearbox - I'll apologise for misreading the situation in a heartbeat. But as it stands, Duke is the hero. The hero, the praise-worthy planet-saving hero, is hitting women to calm them down. That's not satire, and I don't think the finest animator on the planet could tweak the keyframes of that sequence to make it sufficiently "goofy" as to rinse it of basic, pointless offensiveness.

    Finally - to the commenter who accused me of writing this purely to drive traffic... That would be a bit of an odd approach to take on a site that recently explicitly restricted its readership to those involved in the industry! Moreover, I've been writing these columns every week for six or seven years - if I was going to crack and start hitting up the Daily Mail headline generator in a desperate bid for traffic, I think it would have happened long ago. Feel free to disagree with and debate the opinions herein, but believe me when I tell you that they are absolutely my own. Edited 1 times. Most recently by Rob Fahey at 17:16 on 25/03/2011

  • Pwnsweet #319 11 months ago

    will the number of thick-browed cretins who decide to buy Duke Nukem Forever because you can slap women really outnumber the number of people who are utterly repelled from going anywhere near the game as a consequence?

    The answer to that question is an almost certain "Yes", and is the reason why the whole article is pointless.

    edit: as an aside, who'd have ever thought DNF would get so much publicity for reasons other than the massive time it spent in development?
    Edited by 1 at 27/03/11 @ 03:56

  • sirtacos #320 11 months ago

    I agree with a lot of what this article has to say, actually.
    The Duke Nukem devs can obviously include this mode in their game if they wish, but they must understand that they do so at the expense of gaming in general, and the female demographic within the gaming market in particular.
    Yeah, the game mode in question is tasteless and sexist, and yes, it's more insiduous than the adolescent violent fantasies of COD, Soldier of Fortune, Bulletstorm and its ilk. I don't share Rob Fahey's outrage, however - "spank the female hostage" doesn't really shock me any more than the Leisure Suit Larry games, or the more more subtle examples of misogyny that are ubiquitous in games in general... but I do share his frustration.
    Edited by 1 at 27/03/11 @ 04:40

  • coomber #321 11 months ago

    From Tom Bramwell's Twitter (to Rob Fahey): "I read your piece out loud to someone in its entirety. Loved it."

    From Rob Fahey's (to someone else): "if the whole thing turns up to be pointed satire, I'll happily apologise to Gearbox in a heartbeat."

    So the editor doesn't have a problem with his staff calling the readers cunts and Rob admits he may, almost certainly, have to back-track. Internet journalism - real quality stuff!

  • Collymilad #322 11 months ago

    Yeah, way too big a deal.

    It amazes me that for all we've known about this game the last few months, this was what sparked this article.

  • BBIAJ #323 11 months ago

    "what I'm finding momentously stupid and pointlessly offensive - is the 50's-esque "slap the hysterical woman to calm her down" ".

    Wait, so Airplane was made in the 50's?

    What do you mean no!?

    Exactly.

    Rob Fahey am fail...

  • shimbatum #324 11 months ago

    This isn't that dissimilar to Bioshock 2's multiplayer mode where you had to capture the little sister, or the Gears of War mode where you have to subdue a VIP and drag her/him back to your base. I mean, it might not be entirely delicate, but anyone who's getting their social cues and behavioral patterns from a Duke Nukem game shouldn't really be out of a straightjacket in the first place. If you were honestly expecting a politically correct game, then you shouldn't anywhere close to this franchise. You can either enjoy the game or you can't, but don't try to discredit an entry decades in the making simply because you are for some reason unprepared to be offended by a Duke Nukem game.

  • shimbatum #325 11 months ago

    This isn't that dissimilar to Bioshock 2's multiplayer mode where you had to capture the little sister, or the Gears of War mode where you have to subdue a VIP and drag her/him back to your base. I mean, it might not be entirely delicate, but anyone who's getting their social cues and behavioral patterns from a Duke Nukem game shouldn't really be out of a straightjacket in the first place. If you were honestly expecting a politically correct game, then you shouldn't anywhere close to this franchise. You can either enjoy the game or you can't, but don't try to malign an entry decades in the making simply because you are for some reason unprepared to be offended by a Duke Nukem game.
    Edited by 2 at 27/03/11 @ 06:22

  • styles_dg #326 11 months ago

    As rubbish as this article is, I'd bet money that Rob Fahey is just a giant troll, and you ALL got trolled.... think about it ....look at all the comments on this article, and imagine how many hits the article got? Each hit is a cash deposit from the advertisements on this site ...Eurogamer is laughing all the way to the bank.

  • Dekyriel #327 11 months ago

    I usually look forward to the nice editorial articles on here/Gamesindustry.biz, working in the industry myself it helps me get different points of view and, well, remain open-minded altogether. This was until this article though.

    I feel this wasn't an article, this is only a very personal interpretation and point of view which is not even supported by facts, which by the way have been portrayed in a twisted way in comparison to reality. Then there is the crusade: "is likely to raise hell", really? Duke Nukem Forever likely to raise hell? Only for its 14 years development time then.

    This isn't about the buttslap or even about how women are treated irl/in video games, it is about somebody acting like a white knight on a video game website to serve some kind of unwritten agenda - which I've seen a lot of comments about - and is just unbecoming of Eurogamer.

    I can only encourage its author to keep cool in the future when writing, because there is just simply too much emotion in this text, the reader can only ponder as to why. You cannot be offended by software so much can you? I can only encourage you to take a break from playing video games for a while and find the relativity in what we do, who we are. You need a break, Rob.

    I hope I won't see another article of this kind, or at least make it interesting enough that I don't read in diagonals please. :)

    Thanks.

  • jaguarwong #328 11 months ago

    345 comments and counting...

    Job done Mr. Fahey?

  • muttler #329 11 months ago

    Rubbish article. Complete and utter bobbins.

  • aufi #330 11 months ago

    Rob and EG--good effort.

    if you have actually slogged through the scum commenting on this thread, i'd like you to know that a lot of people out there (myself included) would like to convey their heartfelt gratitude for continuing to pen these sorts of articles. it's a tough, bile-inducing exercise in pushing the pebble but, you have my (and im sure many others') support, fwiw.

    personally my hate and rage levels at this insult of a game are barely checked.

  • metalangel #331 11 months ago

    The reason, Fahey, everyone is drawing analogies with slapping their own partner on the butt, is that is what you said happens in the game, and that alone. At no point do you say Duke slaps or hits her anywhere else, face or otherwise. It's you who then goes off on this preposterous tangent, drawing these tenuous connections between a slap on the butt and domestic violence (and further nonsense about war and killing and oppression).

  • Jolly_Armadillo #332 11 months ago

    Scum? Bit OTT don't you think.

    Your generalising us all as scum because we don't agree with an article as if that means we now agree with domestic violence.

    Please get some perspective, noone in this article has condoned domestic abuse, we just find this article to just be a shit stir..

    The article is complete and utter tosh, I am not scum, neither are many people who have also posted comments here. Neither are we cunts..

  • Smoped #333 11 months ago

    Crikey! This is even bigger and angrier than any of the DF comparison threads.
    Even if I don't necessarily agree, I can understand people getting in a huff over perceived sexism, but why are so many people in a rage over somebody suggesting this is too much?
    I mean I'm sure we can all agree that Duke Nukem is quite sexist. Further on, the vast majority would agree that the sexism is intended to be satirical, that Duke is making fun of the über-masculine hero type. Or at least that it's all meant to be just a joke. But mr. Fahey doesn't think it's funny, or at least thinks the sexism negates the humour. Now, I happen to disagree with him on this, but still think the subject might merit a serious discussion. But pretty much everyone in this thread is foaming at the mouth. I just don't get you people.

  • metalangel #334 11 months ago

    It does deserve a serious discussion, in much the way the 'bisexual' thing in Dragon Age 2 did.

    However, this was a really hamfisted way on the behalf of EG to try and get a discussion started (if that was their intention) and calling us cunts when we take exception to the way the so-called argument is presented has overshadowed the actual issue.

  • Smoped #335 11 months ago

    Didn't he use the word in general without having actually read any of the comments over here? I can't remember seeing too many "It'd be fine if it was a man" comments here, though to be fair I couldn't bear to read all the comments.

  • j-bo #336 11 months ago

    lol at people aligning the daily mail with feminism.

    *waits for the 'pope pushing his pro gay propaganda' comparison*

  • jstar #337 11 months ago

    We're foaming at the mouth because it's fucking annoying when a games journalist decides to employ the tactics of Fox News to construct an argument.

    This situation is very similar to the whole Chef/south park issue. For those unfamiliar with it, Isaac Hayes spent many years happily ripping the piss out of all and sundry but when Trey Parker and Matt Stone decided to take a pot shot at his beloved Scientology he complained. Quite rightly they treated him like the hypocritical fucktard he was and devoted an entire episode to killing off his character. Because either it is ok to insult everyone or it's not alright. There can't be any exceptions.

    Rob's argument rather depressingly echoes this. Because in the land of Fahey apparently a light hearted and obviously comic game will lead to wife beating where as repeated killing of terrorists is obvious fantasy. Because Rob is so right on and down with the ladies he's set his flag in the ground. But he couldn't really give a fuck about anyone who might offended by anything else.

    Now either video games make us all violent rapist killers or they don't. I happen to be in the latter camp. My only evidence being 20 years of wasted gaming and not just no dead bodies or rape victims to my name but also no desire to add any. (Though I haven't played Duke Nukem forever so watch this space).

    The only group of people who might be susceptible to the 'ass slapping' effect in DNF are kids. And rightly so the game is rated so that they can't play it. Not that some won't but quite frankly as an adult who himself saw quite a few 18 rated movies when I was underage I don't really think it will have much effect on them either. Anyone who does end up a wife beater is much more likely to do so because of the environment they grew up in. IE, their father was one. And I don't think we can lay the blame for that at the door of a game yet to be released. Unfortunately wife beating has been around for a while longer than computer games. And actually I bet proportionally domestic abuse involving women is not as frequent now as it was say 100 years ago when there were no games at all.

    Finally my own personal anger stems from Rob's insistence that I am unable to tell fact from fantasy. And in fact according to his article it is impossible for me to play Duke Nukem Forever without afterwards deciding that beating women is acceptable. As he shows in the following quote. A quote that Stompy idiot keeps trotting out despite the fact it actually disproves her argument.

    'There's no funny, goofy way to give a player - playing as an all-American hero - a button which slaps a woman to calm her down, because there's no way to do it without reinforcing the basic and sadly still widely held view that this is an acceptable thing to do.'

    Unfortunately for Rob I am fairly confident that I can resist the wife beating message and come out the other side with my current attitude regarding women still intact. That attitude being a belief in total equality between the sexes in all areas of life with no exceptions. For example, I would be arguing just as vehemently for women's sexism towards men in some other form of media.

    The thing is I don't even find Duke Nukem particularly funny. In fact I find it rather purile and immature. It's not really my thing and I probably wouldn't have bought the game at all. Now of course I have to if only because it's my own little way of telling Rob Fahey and all the other PC pricks who want to sanitise the world to go fuck themselves.


    Edited by 1 at 27/03/11 @ 11:38

  • Jolpaz #338 11 months ago

    "Slapping women? That's something which, sadly, happens every day in countless households around the world."

    And men don't die in war every day? Turn on the TV please!

  • j-bo #339 11 months ago

    And the amount of furor and vitriol being thrown at Rob for raising a viewpoint critiquing the rampant misogyny in gaming culture, for me suggests that it has hit a nerve and hints at just how endemic the discourse is.

    If it was just plain off the mark, people wouldn't be reacting so strongly, they'd probably just dismiss it and move on.I don't think anyone could claim that gaming culture isn't largely sexist, so regardless of whether you agree with the duke nuke critique or not, you'd think that people would use this as a point to discuss how gaming culture relates to gender and sexuality. But nah, instead lets have 500 comments of 'PC gone mad!' (which pretty much validates the need for articles like this anyway)

    Sigh.

  • jstar #340 11 months ago

    Misogyny - a man who hates women.

    There is no fucking rampant misogyny in gaming culture. Who in gaming culture hates women? What are you talking about?

  • Ryze #341 11 months ago

    @stryker1121

    "You're on a slippery slope here, Mr. Fahey. You're equating ass-slapping w/ truly heinous acts of abuse. CTB mode is certainly silly and immature but the leap you're taking deflates the entire discussion. Why not interview actual girl gamers and get their take on the mode? I'd find that much more interesting than what's presented here."

    Unfortunately girl gamers are likely to grin and bear it while holding their tongues.

    Otherwise, they'd be shouted - or slapped down in the same way that Fahey and Stompy are being raged at (by majority white, straight, hardcore-gamer males) here.

    I'll not comment, as I've seen NO footage of the game mode. The response on this comments thread however - seems to point to either:

    1 - 300 gamers who have seen / sampled this mode and have a serious point

    2 - The typical 'safe white male / power group' shouting down the opposing view proclaiming "IT'S NOT SEXIST!", although they have absolutely no qualification to decide or make a judgement on that, as a group

    Now, I don't either, and everyone has a right to vent an opinion - so I've just expressed mine. What they mean is, "IT DOESN'T APPEAR TO BE SEXIST, IN OUR OPINION AS A MASS OF HARDCORE MALE GAMERS".

    This is the reason that certain groups of people only got the vote in the USA in the 1960s. The argument would have been that they don't have the right or the intelligence to vote, and that this is just the way that the world is (from the power group's perspective).

    I'll now keep an eye out for some footage of the game mode in order that I can get a better angle on how serious the content is. 'Slapping a woman to calm her down' sounds like dodgy territory however, if this isn't a silly exaggeration.

    Like many racist arguments, and other taboo subject that haven't yet been tackled controversially in games - the serious history of sexism and abuse is something that the young, white male audience often doesn't have the first clue about.

    Their life perspective or living memory often only takes them back to the 90s, and only from the perspective of their own neighbourhoods and the UK press. When high-profile abuse cases appeared in the press in the US, for example in the 90s - they could go unreported or remain under the radar in the UK.

    Edited for clarity after re-reading.
    Edited by 1 at 27/03/11 @ 17:13

  • bloodflowers #342 11 months ago

    I just want to know which skirt Rob is chasing in the office, because I can't see any other reason for writing this drivel.

    My girlfriend saw the Duke trailer, and she laughed - at it rather than with it. That's what normal rational people do.

  • coolbritannia #343 11 months ago

    aufi: 'personally my hate and rage levels at this insult of a game are barely checked.' You must be a fairly pathetic individual.

    Metalangel, from the comments at GI.biz, the gamemode has never been made public, so Rob is basically making this up based on what he thinks it will be like. Filler article, complete fluff. But hey it gets them the page hits so who cares if it's a slow slide into the gaming press gutter right?

  • Ryze #344 11 months ago

    ^ Anyone got any footage of this crap that we're all commenting on?

  • styles_dg #345 11 months ago

    @Jolly_Armadillo
    I wouldn't concern youself with addressing aufi and his like ...they're too busy frothing at the mouth and being crazy to listen to anyone else. I'm sure he's off in his own little world where he is always right and anyone who disagrees with him is the very worst. The language he uses gives him away ...he's fanatic... and probably a very stupid and uninformed one. Although I'm sure he thinks he knows it all.

  • Guildenstern #346 11 months ago

    I am not scum, neither are many people who have also posted comments here.
    Haha, tell me another one.

    Neither are we cunts..
    Indeed you aren't. You lack the depth, the warmth and the charm.

  • CaptainQuint #347 11 months ago

    Another day, another cunt calling someone else a cunt.

  • coolbritannia #348 11 months ago

    j-bo: 'the amount of furor and vitriol being thrown at Rob for raising a viewpoint critiquing the rampant misogyny in gaming culture, for me suggests that it has hit a nerve and hints at just how endemic the discourse is'

    So if next week they post an article saying we're all paedo's and that we must be cunts if we disagree, by your logic we're guilty by acknowledging it or guilty if we protest. I hope to god you're not a judge, and never sit on a jury.

  • Gamer_Zero #349 11 months ago

    "The slaughter of thousands by an improbable super-soldier is pretty blatantly within the realms of utter fantasy. Slapping women? That's something which, sadly, happens every day in countless households around the world. "

    So Eurogamer thinks that killing doesn't happen around the world? War and terrorism are something out of the realm of fantasy and therefore harmless? Or is it that "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a high score"? Maybe you should turn off Pokemon and watch the news once in a while, would you kindly?

    An improbable super-soldier that slaughters aliens and also slaps improbable babes is somehow realistic, that's fine - it is 2011 after all. Maybe there should be a mode where you slap thousands and thousands of women instead of one. And then you kill them and slice off their breasts, then use them to buy power-ups. That would clearly be a harmless fantasy, right? Am I on the right track?

    Or maybe you think that impressionable males around the world will start kicking women around because they saw it in a videogame. That's right, just like the wave of muggings, rapes and shooting sprees that happened after they played Grand Theft Auto.

    Way to go shooting yourself in the foot in an attempt at sensationalism Eurogamer. Better leave that to the Sun and Jack Thomson next time.

  • Murton #350 11 months ago

    "Dudes calm down. I'm heavily opposed to Fahey's point of view myself (you may have read my comments), but don't blatantly insult him and demand his sacking, that's a bit off the scale, isn't it?"

    The insults were quite veiled until he took to Twatter to call the readership cunts, while EG readers should probably have retained the high ground a few did not and that lead to the personal insults against Rob which lead to more comments on Twitter which essentially instigated a snowball effect. I'm not defending those those insulted him, I disagree with that position as much as I do Rob's article, but you have to look at who threw the first punch as it were.

    As for his sacking, with the exception of those who seriously screw up I wouldn't wish a job loss on anyone as I've been through that several times through no fault of my own and it's never nice. I would however go as far as say he should be suspended from writing opinion pieces (news is fine) for a short while, he's shown himself to have something of a lack of perspective (as shown by his generalisation) and has taken the criticism of his opinon personally and allowed that to lead him to a misconduct and there should be a repremand of some sort for that.

    The problem here is taking a single set piece from a single game and using it to generalise the second biggest entertainment industry in the world. It's an ignorant nonsense and should be viewed as such, as other posters have pointed out these opinion pieces could be used to challenge genuine industry trends such as the level of violence in shooters, references to drug abuse in RPGs or the shocking decline in technical quality of modern games which crash, freeze and slowdown on regular basis but still see a retail release. Instead we get a generalisation that the whole industry is sexist because of a single game, it's a missed opporunity really, these articles were doing so well and generating some truly great debates in the comments threads but this one has missed the target by quite a distance and that is pretty evident by the caliber of some of the comments here.

  • coolbritannia #351 11 months ago

    I think there are some great comments here, all disagreeing with Faheys new world order.

  • menage #352 11 months ago

    I'm sick and tired of the "offended".

    I'm offended that I'm supposed to wax my chesthair nowadays.
    Edited by 1 at 27/03/11 @ 13:07

  • CaptainQuint #353 11 months ago

    @murton

    Perhaps you should post your reasoned comments on the Industry.biz website where the piece originates. Fahey has responded to feedback there.

  • muttler #354 11 months ago

    After reading the twitter feeds of Fahey, Bramwell, etc on this article, I can only say wtf.

  • Stompy #355 11 months ago

    @coolbritannia: So if next week they post an article saying we're all paedo's and that we must be cunts if we disagree, by your logic we're guilty by acknowledging it or guilty if we protest. I hope to god you're not a judge, and never sit on a jury.

    This article does not say that "we're all" anything. It's these comments that have kicked off the argument, because this is where people's attitudes are revealed. The article was just the chance for people to flex their dickhead muscles.

  • varkdm #356 11 months ago

    I don't agree with the article, what is interesting to me more is the thing about the gamestation advert. It sounds like a stupid advert but im obviously not offended by it.. if there is one place in society where you can see blatant sexism, its in the advertisement breaks.

    Watch an hours tv with ..4 .. 5 breaks for adverts and count how many of those adverts make their point by making the man in a couple look stupid, show a man screwing something up and the women sorting out, show women getting one over on men.

    Sexism just seems to be part of advertising, it isn't worth getting worked up over.

  • Doncommie #357 11 months ago

    MMOs opened the door for female gamers to be more acknowledged in the mainstream and then Left 4 Dead and TF2 let them move to more hardcore gaming. I play almost every day with a friend who tries all kinds of games (she plays a lot of Eve) and has gamed for years but she's constantly annoyed with the games media dealing with girl gamers either as a protective parent overreacting to anything that might be vaguely sexist, fawning over them for being female or patronizing them because girls aren't meant to play or be good at games.

    I think she'd call this dumb but otherwise wouldn't care as it's not a game she wants to play.

  • Lamb #358 11 months ago

    (Speaking as Duke)

    Oh Yeeeah!!! I can't believe no one mentioned one of my most famous lines from my computer game, Your face, Your ass, whats the difference!!! Heh! Heh!

    A female version of me would be a porn star who knows how to have fun. See Belladona, Bobbi Starr or the up and coming Arbella Anderson.

    I don't hurt girls I think they are bite sized morsels of fun. Oh yeah!!! When I slap a girls ass I know she going to like it because I have already spoken to her at length and told her from the beginning I am nasty and looking for fun. She could have slapped me or walked away at any point before that.

    I don't go out looking for trouble. You see these muscles they were built with a life time of discipline and dedication to living the goood life. I make money out of the air I breathe because I don't go looking for trouble. Oh yeah!!!

    Also I count all my close friends on five fingers. Randy the Macho Man Savage the original me and the person who gave me my Oh yeah line. Rocco Sieffredi who showed me how to be more confident with leading females in and out of the sack. Former President Bill Clinton who redefined what constitutes sex enabling more freedoms in the workplace so I can employ more females as stress busters. Oh yeah!!! And Vince McMahon for all the growth hormones and enabling my comical potty mouth by telling me to get the F out!!! And lastly George C. Patton for teaching me how to go through the enemy like crap through a goose!!!

    Of course I don't actually don't know all those people I just met them through the social media they call television. But I live my life how I want and thank god I don't have a dictator or the after effects of a tsunami, earthquake combo to worry about.

    I pray daily that the people on this planet will get along so I don't have to deal single handedly against the threat of an alien invasion for the upteenth time. Lastly I want to say rest in peace Carl Sagan you expanded my mind and taught me how to deal with aggressive intelligent life from the cosmos!!!

    (End of speaking as Duke) :D
    Edited by 4 at 27/03/11 @ 15:06

  • Augmentation #359 11 months ago

    I quite enjoyed reading all the comments here. If nothing else, the article was a great way to get a (mostly) good discussions going. While I don't agree with the article at hand at all, I don't think it should be removed just because people disagree with things here and there.

    What I disliked (apart from the points covered by everybody else) is that the article was a departure from what the editorial usually represents: professional games developers' opinions and how these opinions relate to a particular issue. In this article, it felt like Rob had a personal agenda - not only because of the general style but also because the article barely touches on the effects that the Capture the Babe mode might have on sales, etc. That said, it doesn't mean that the article should be removed (after all censorship is worse that an article you don't agree with being posted on a website).

    By mixing the personal agenda in with a supposedly professional viewpoint, Rob has (as the prior comments attest) annoyed a lot of people. It's the fact that he doesn't seem to be prepared to admit this ever happening or therefore to learn from it that particularly annoys me. Ah well.

    Stompy, I don't see why you're arguing in such an aggressive way. You're pushing your argument against people who obviously don't agree with you (in fact, I don't think I've seen a single person agree with you). Despite the fact that you call this a forum for people to supposedly flex their dickhead muscles, none of the points you've put forward are really related exclusively to this article, so I'd say you're just using this as a jumping off point to push your own agenda of general anti-(so-called)misogynistic views. Plus, name calling doesn't get you anywhere, does it? I'd go as far as calling myself anti-Feminism (I'm all for equality, just not for the "men are bad, we don't need them" brand) but I don't see the point in being aggressive about an argument (especially not in such a forum).

  • Fozzie_bear #360 11 months ago

    Can I call the author an odious cunt here or do I need to save it for twitter?

  • Zeburdee #361 11 months ago

    At least one thing has been proven beyond doubt, and with a high degree of statistical significance, from this article:

    Rob Fahey has passed the Twatus Absolutus exam with distinction.

    And if there's any journalistic justice, he'll be forced into a sex change, bent over a man's knee and summarily slapped (possibly while being filmed for 'We Dare 2's marketing campaign).

  • coolbritannia #362 11 months ago

    @ Stompy, are you deliberately misquoting me or are you only reading half my posts? j-bo said it was endemic. hence me quoting j-bo's post.

  • Jonny5Alive7 #363 11 months ago

    Have to say I have lost respect for Rob after reading this. Everything in Duke games is extremely tongue in cheek. There is a massive difference between that and encouraging domestic violence. I expect better than this from established games press. You would see something like this in the Daily Mail not on here.

  • rozzimorri #364 11 months ago

    There is a difference between the violence usually shown to men compared to the 'violence' shown in the game to women. In the vast majority of games, men are killed through armed combat, it is an age old fact that to die in combat is honorable, courageous and admirable. Even if the member who was killed is from the enemy team, usually respect is shown. The aggression towards women in this is not honorable, it is just humiliating, the woman cannot defend herself which is different to women soldiers, which I have no problem with. Of course you have to take the context of the game into perspective, the game is obviously over the top and slap dash, but, the point still stands.

  • GreyBeard #365 11 months ago

    Hang on a second, why is a guy so sensitive about sexism using the horribly misogynistic epithet "cunts"?

    Irony? (Really?)

    Even if that claim turns out to be inaccurate, the article was so patronizing and paternalistic it was fully deserving of the brickbats it received.

    CTB mode is a bit of gleeful bad-taste fun, not a mandate for abuse. To suggest anything other is ludicrous, look at the context for heaven's sake!

    Honestly I find humourless pc-drones like Mr Fahey far more offensive because unlike Duke they have pretensions of superiority. Yes, Gearbox are consiciously "stirring the pot" with this type of content, but this type of hyper-selective outrage strikes me as being just as calculated, and equally mercenary in its purpose to generate revenue through controversy.

  • crisotunity #366 11 months ago

    - Mr Fahey proclaimed that the readership of this website constitutes "the cesspool of humanity" and that we are all "cunts" (but not in a sexist way obviously) without looking at any of the comments: his readership is the cesspool of humanity by definition and he was expecting this sort of reaction. How on earth can he carry on working for this website if he has such low opinion of its readers? It would be soul-destroying for someone as sensitive as Rob. He needs to reemploy his skills somewhere else for his own and humanity's benefit. We are not good enough for him. I certainly feel that I do not deserve him.

    - Did Tom Bramwell really read out loud an article that was published in his website about Duke Nuke'em? To whom? For how long? Was he holding the listener at gun-point? Also, praising Rob Fahey on his twitter: what an ungraceful reach-around.

    - Thanks to those who re-published Rob Fahey's response from the "grown-up" website (we are clearly not worthy). The man has zero reading comprehension, or he is an intellectual coward: no attempt to deal with any points beyond the easy pickings (ie, the 2-3 Clarkson socks).

    I cannot wait for the next Euro-gamer expo :-)
    Edited by 1 at 27/03/11 @ 16:25

  • coolbritannia #367 11 months ago

    'Even if the member who was killed is from the enemy team, usually respect is shown.' hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha, *breathes* hahahahahahahahaahahahaha, seriously dude, you've never played an online competitive game have you?

    Teabagging FTW!

  • bcrankshaw #368 11 months ago

    Good and relevant article
    I am a male gamer and I fail to understand why Gearbox has to include such a petulant and provocative part of the game as" Capture the Babe " . This does nothing to help reduce the levels of bigotry and hate speech we see amongst some segments of gamers
    I thinks it pathetic that some people are actually defending something that Gearbox doesn't need to include in the game ,abuse of women is a serious problem in society .We should distance ourselves from any thing that makes it " funny " or " but Im only hitting her in the game "

  • Kami #369 11 months ago

    Look, this can be resolved very easily.

    This is Duke Nukem. A game not known for subtlety, irony or being sexually equal. It's very apparant from screenshots, from artwork, from the first few minutes of any Duke game where it's headed.

    You don't go into a Frankie Boyle standup show and not expect to be in some way offended. You don't go into a Tattoo parlour and not expect some pain. You don't go to Disneyworld for the grown-up conversation.

    Duke Nukem is what it is. So far, what I've seen, it's not ironic or clever in any way at all, regardless of what Gearbox want us to believe. And they do themselves a disservice trying to downplay the fact this IS a hillbilly sort of game - it is what it is. Male chauvenistic bullshit, massive overcompensatory guns because let's face it, with that body Duke is on steroids and his penis must be hard to find without the aid of a powerful microscope - it's sexist, it's racist, it's always been that way and it is, as a result in my opinion, woefully outdated. It was barely acceptible in the 90s - even then, it sold on controversy at a time when the industry was caught between kids and grown-ups. Today - well. Not quite so much. It hasn't worked for Mortal Kombat, so I'd say Duke Nukem is in for a rough time of it.

    No, I'm not a fan of Duke as you can tell. But you know what? It's patently obvious from the outset what this game is going to involve, and any mode like Capture the Babe and the slapping of girls bottoms or across the face isn't because it adds anything to the game - it's there to drum up the column inches, court controversy, albeit in the most cynical and pathetic sort of manner.

    Which brings me back to the point of it all - will this game deliver on quality gameplay? Will it be a good, solid, fun game? Or will it be a limp, weak, archaic relic of an FPS that really should have been left in the 90's? It has to be a good game - this is a game that has been 14 years coming (1997 was the announcement chaps).

    The fact they're courting controversy and trying to downplay it all as somehow deeply ironic is, unfortunately, telling me from the outset that it probably isn't going to be of amazing depth and complexity - they're trying to distract us from something. I suspect it's because, in truth, the game isn't going to rock our world.

    Cynical, cynical, cynical. All is full of cynical. Rob's article is. Gearbox is. DNF actually being released is. But hey, at least it's clear from the outset - some games don't even give us this amount of warning, so if nothing else let us be thankful we've had such a wonderful heads-up to ground the excitement that a game a decade and a half nearly in the making is finally being released.

    DNF will be offensive. It was always going to court controversy. I'm more surprised that people are actually taking it seriously instead of doing what we've done to Mortal Kombat for a decade, THAT peadophile quest in Dragon Age 2 and various other things and just ignored it...

  • coolbritannia #370 11 months ago

    bcrankshaw, my girlfriend just brought me fried eggs, and I asked for poached! naturally i stuck a plasma nade on her. i mean, i haven't played Duke Nukem Forever yet or anything, but if Gearbox says it's ok to spank a pixellated ass, it must be ok to murder your girllfriend, right? AMIRITE?!

  • Mister-Wario #371 11 months ago

    Wow, 386 comments when I wrote this. Is this a new record?

  • coolbritannia #372 11 months ago

    From Joystiqs article: 'Update: The Redner Group clarified for us that Duke won't actually be slapping the "babe" in her face, as much as he'll be slapping her on the butt. That's MUCH more acceptable!'

    From Fox News(!): 'The magazine described it as "more goofy than offensive."

    So, humiliating climbdown time Mr Fahey?

    edit: Also, isn't the point of DNF saving the women of the earth from being impregnated by aliens? So the whole game is capturing the babes is it not?
    Edited by 1 at 27/03/11 @ 16:58

  • Smoped #373 11 months ago

    Tutto macho fantastico!

  • Fozzie_bear #374 11 months ago

    The typical 'safe white male / power group' shouting down the opposing view proclaiming.... blah blah blah

    This is something that the daft cunt whined about in his twitter bleat, isn't it?

    Can someone tell me where the fuck being white has anything to with this? Is everyone who has posted an opinion here white? Would it matter if they were?

    Even if there's a point to be made here (and if there is it deserves to be made in a much better way than the bullshit published on the front page) then inventing the idea that this is something to do with uniquely white middle class male attitudes just makes the author look like a fucking idiot.

    Oh, it's written by Shinji? "Fucking idiot" is a given then, isn't it? The forum became a better place when he fucked off and took his mindless opinions with him. Maybe the main site would benefit in a similar way.

  • Raz76 #375 11 months ago

    "Wow, 386 comments when I wrote this. Is this a new record? "

    Are you kidding? :-D
    http://ww w.eurogamer.net/articles/metal-...

  • schnide #376 11 months ago

    To my mind, this argument has been approached from a very misguided angle by Fahey.

    It's actually simply this - Capture The Babe isn't particularly more immature than most of what else you'd find in games, including Call of Duty. However, both these games are immature as are many in the industry as a whole. Neither are particularly bad, but both are good examples of why the industry still has plenty of growing up to do, even though it's still got pretty far without needing to do so.

  • Smoped #377 11 months ago

    That MGS thread is so epic one day they'll be making games based on it.

  • Svecke #378 11 months ago

    The only one taking a "misstep" is Rob Fahey - with this article. Trying to milk hysteria much?

  • coolbritannia #379 11 months ago

    Are the comments in the MGS thread deleted now?

    edit: why would anyone neg this?
    Edited by 1 at 27/03/11 @ 19:16

  • craziii #380 11 months ago

    this guy needs to calm down. it is guys like that who is making a big deal out of nothing.

  • Jonny5Alive7 #381 11 months ago

    If the press do kick up a fuss about it, its only going to sell more copies. That's what usually happens.

  • charming_fox #382 11 months ago

    What an odd relationship consumers of video games have with the game industry, it's bonkers, why do we even care? Why can't we just buy and play the games that we like and not be babbling about crap like this all the time. On the other hand, if I had reffered to our organisations' clients as 'cunt' I would expect a P45, this Fahey chap deserves a good old fashion internet backlash, inculding a commments thread bombing of all his articles. (Childish but fuck it, he called us all cunts).

  • Lord_Gremlin #383 11 months ago

    Duke Nukem. Spanking is a must.

    And after spanking - oral sex.

  • Raz76 #384 11 months ago

    "Duke Nukem. Spanking is a must.

    And after spanking - oral sex. "

    Actually that reminds me: The game Monty Python and the Holy Grail had a minigame called Spank the Virgin. I don't remember that causing a huge fuss.

    Edit: Of course that was more consensual, I guess you have to make that distinction.

    2nd edit: I can't believe I'm participating in this discussion.
    Edited by 2 at 27/03/11 @ 21:36

  • Xephon1970 #385 11 months ago

    It'll be intereting to see if any PR shenanigans results from this when Bramwell and co turn up at the office in the morning. Fahey's twitter riposte of "cunts" is a serious misstep itself. Unless this is the beginning of some sort of GI/EG crusade to clean up the masses of sexism clearly rampant within gaming, if they are to be believed.

    If that's the case, why stop there, surely homophobia and the presentation of gay men and women in gaming needs to be addressed? Is that the subject of the next article, or would that be a another misstep? Because why stop at this Rob, surely if you're going to point out the sexism inherent in a slap to the behind in a Duke Nukem game, then the presentation of a hugely camp gay man in GTA IV is just as offensive? The fact it reinforces a stereotype not a fitting subject for a games site? No? Maybe not current enough?

    I do wonder why journos allow themselves to comment and reply in such a public manner on Twiitter, knowing full well that the whole world can see. Maybe it is ego. But it certainly is foolish. Can't wait to see what happens next. A reasonable discussion on all the points raised is probably too much to ask for.

  • Zeburdee #386 11 months ago

    @Xephon1970:

    "I do wonder why journos allow themselves to comment and reply in such a public manner on Twiitter, knowing full well that the whole world can see. Maybe it is ego."

    Hmm...well let's see what his website bio says...

    "Through my work for The Times, GamesIndustry.biz and Eurogamer, I’ve become fairly recognisable as a games commentator"

    Ego it is then.

    And yes Rob: through your sterling journalism you have indeed been recognised fairly...
    ...as a complete fuckwit.

  • charming_fox #387 11 months ago

    I'm not one for eeping tabs on who does what around here, I know there's a Tom Bramwell an Ellie Gibson (whose writing is like marmite it seems) but what does Rob Fahey normally contribute? Reviews and shizzle?

  • Optimas #388 11 months ago

    First post in a long time,it's the "and rightly so" in the title i'm surprised to see on a gaming site. Valid points raised about the industries leaning towards certain groups and portrayals of women, bad execution and examples given though.
    Dukes game mode works in the context of the duke "universe/game) much like any other game (cod - killing people, mario -going into pipes etc) Duke is a product of the 90's of which himself is a 80's style action hero.
    The key thing to remember.. these are games- entertainment

  • Retroid #389 11 months ago

    irve77: "@Retroid

    yes let us take away free speech from those too stupid to deal with the responsibly !

    oh
    wait ..."

    Well done on not understanding / misrepresenting what I was saying!

    My point was that there's freedom of speech and freedom of being stupid wankers. On this matter, I think Gearbox have fallen more into the latter than the former.

    Do I support "stopping" it? No. Do I think they should've had more of a serious think about this? Yes, I do.

  • Subdominator #390 11 months ago

    So... someone is concerned because you slap a woman in an egoshooter? Why shoot people and stuff in the first place, shouldn't we better talk our ways through games? The whole idea of "Yes, I have no problem with you gutting that guy and cutting that guy's throat but don't you dare slap this woman, you perv" is pretty disturbing to me. If you want to be PC then be it all the way and don't come up with nonsense like this article.

  • Gearskin #391 11 months ago

    WOW! This must be a comments record?

    It's kinda funny. This article about a non-issue has become a bigger issue than the issue... issue.

  • smelly #392 11 months ago

    I *still* say the mode should've been called "Capture the Slag"

  • Aradiel #393 11 months ago

    So, you spank a woman on the bum in order to "calm her down" and yet this is "reinforcing" the "commonly held view that hitting women is ok"?

    Is that view particularly common? I doubt it.

    Maybe we should wait until we actually see the mode in action before we judge - you know, not be prejudiced about it?
    Maybe it is done more tastefully than many are imagining (or, perhaps the woman enjoys it, I know that some people like spanking - though, I imagine some would argue that doing so is also negative, perhaps saying it's reducing a video game character to nothing other than some kind of sex object)

    Yes, the way the mode was announced is blatantly in order to stir up controversy - and Fahey played right into their trap.

  • smelly #394 11 months ago

    My girlfriend enjoys me spanking her as she gets carried away....

  • DarthMartious #395 11 months ago

    I agree. Duke should be a black, female, disabled, Welsh trade-unionist utterly opposed to gun culture.

    This sort of pseudo-intellectual-lefty commentary really annoys me as it supposes:

    1) That by buying and enjoying a video game you naturally identify with the protagonist.
    2) That women - or some other, supposed, minority - are incapable of role play.
    3) That White Anglo-Saxon Males are the root of all evil, and must be frowned upon.

    Why does Rob Fahey not decry the inclusion of guns in video games? After all, there are very real conflicts going on right now.

    I don't want to live in the "utopia" that people like Rob Fahey promote - that sort of world isn't one of freedom, but one of complete oppression.

  • Repsode #396 11 months ago


    "Selfish, ignorant, fuckwitted white male whinging. Cunts."

    Rob summed up the game industry's lack of maturity better in this one sentence than the actual article.

    Racist, arrogant, and, ironically enough, sexist to boot. Well done Fahey. I used to enjoy your usually well reasoned takes on the gaming industry even if I haven't always agreed with them.

    That said I find it baffling that you failed to recognise that making unprofessional comments about your employer's readership in a public forum was not a good idea.



    Edited by 1 at 27/03/11 @ 23:50

  • coolbritannia #397 11 months ago

    Rob's actually been kind enough to reply to some questions I've asked him on twitter.

    I asked 'given that Joystiq have confirmed that there is no face slapping in the game, it's merely a spanked bottom, do you now feel differently?' to which he replied: 'No - there was never a suggestion of face-slapping in the first place, so I dunno why Joystiq needed to "confirm" this.'

    Am I the only one who thought there was more involved than a spanked bottom based on this article?

    I've now thanked him for the response and asked: 'thanks for the response. Do you regret calling the EG readership 'cunts'? We're quite offended by that remark.' Fair play to Rob, he's been quite civil to me on Twitter so far.
    Edited by 1 at 28/03/11 @ 00:06

  • DarthMartious #398 11 months ago

    @coolbritannia

    I can't be bothered following Rob - I'm sure to find his level of pseudo-intellectualism highly irritating - so can you ask him where, when he and his missus go out in matching kagools, his sense of identity is?

  • coolbritannia #399 11 months ago

    Does he have a gf, really?

  • RobotRocker #400 11 months ago

    This sort of pseudo-intellectual-lefty commentary really annoys me as it supposes:

    Christ, we are hitting 1.21 Littlejohns on the Daily Mail scale. ABANDON SHIP.

  • smelly #401 11 months ago

    The yanks have got a lot of explaining to do. Ever since palin, it seems the whole world seems to be obsessed with "left" this and "right" that. "Left" seemingly always used as being deogitory...

  • Genji #402 11 months ago

    Bit late to the party. But I've just read this, and the comments about it.

    I do think Mr. Fahey is drawing a bit of a long bow in this particular case. But he is right in a broader sense, that a great number of video games don't have a good history with regards to portrayals of women. At best it is a chequered history.

    I think it has gotten a whole lot better recently, though. Which is why this reaction to Duke Nukem is so strong. It's a throwback to a different era - almost old-fashioned!

  • Lucodeath #403 11 months ago

    Can any of you remember the brilliant duke nukem 3d? I can even remember the first doom on pc. 11 x 3.5" disks on a $1400 436 pc in the early 90s.(company pc). Duke nukem 3d on n64 was ace with 4 controllers. Late 90s before internet hit my area.

  • toastmodernist #404 11 months ago

    sometimes reading the comments of my fellow peers makes me want to jam a screwdriver deep into my eye socket.

  • drivenstorm #405 11 months ago

    I wonder if Gearbox would be brave enough to stick said woman in a burka? Why not? It's only a laff and a game.

  • M_of_the_sys #406 11 months ago

    I asked my girlfriend to read the article and she agreed with everything he wrote so I gave her a playful slap on the bum and told her to get back in the kitchen. Crazy woman.
    Edited by 1 at 28/03/11 @ 08:48

  • Mugwum Verified Operations Director, Eurogamer Network #407 11 months ago

    Hey guys!

    This piece has got a lot of people hot and bothered so I thought it would be helpful if I added a few things.

    First of all, Rob's weekly editorial comes from GamesIndustry.biz originally, so I didn't commission it, but we republish them on Saturdays and I chose to publish this one knowing very well what it said.

    Second, we are no fans of people judging games without playing them, but I do think it is fair to judge the way games are marketed. So, below is the exact wording about Capture the Babe from the Official Xbox Magazine article:

    "These two maps also proved good for Capture the Babe, which is pretty much what you'd expect from a CTF-style mode, with one small touch: the 'Babe' will sometimes freak out while you're carrying her (somewhat understandable, we'd say), at which point you have to hit a button to gently give her a reassuring slap. Trust us, it's more goofy than offensive.'"

    Neither 2K nor Gearbox wrote the copy, but they gave OXM a presentation that led to this summary. The only clarifying information that I've seen was Randy Pitchford's tweet that you "give the girl a love smack on the booty – not face!"

    In response, Rob's editorial boils down to his view that it's not appropriate to make flippantly slapping a woman part of your game.

    He then goes on to argue – especially given how an unhealthily large minority of gamers throw around sexist, racist and homophobic slurs online like it's going out of fashion, which is so common now as to be beyond the realms of mere anecdote – that an FPS is a particularly unhelpful context for casual sexism.

    However, there are plenty of other reasonable perspectives on this – several of which you can find elsewhere in this comments thread – and if you hold one of them then of course we are not saying you are a massive sexist. We're just saying that this is the way we feel about this feature and we would be happier if Duke Nukem Forever didn't include it.

    --

    Right then, some other stuff and a few direct responses:

    Last week Pitchford also tweeted: "A story of a story of a story eventually becomes so far from the source that it has more value as fiction than news."

    I can sympathise with that to some extent, even if it is a bit passive aggressive, but 2K and Gearbox must have noticed by now that people find some of the game's content – especially Duke's attitude to women – "provocative" to put it mildly, and doing a print exclusive where Capture the Babe was likely to be acknowledged rather than investigated was always going to lead to Chinese whispers.

    If I was making a game where the lead character began getting sucked off by twins in his golden penthouse apartment, and where the whole context of his adventure is that women are too weak to defend themselves, I would probably try to educate people about the context of that a bit more actively.

    Inviting a lot of journalists to play Capture the Babe rather than just one would have been the better option. More informed voices = better debate = less Twitter agony.

    --

    @crisotunity:

    "How dare you come up with a statement like this during a week where these revelations [about the US "kill team"] come out? I know this is the internet and I should not get upset about semi-literate nonsense, but damn it."

    We find that stuff appalling too (how could anyone not?), but Rob was referring to the one-man-army characters in Call of Duty, which is not the same thing.

    --

    @Freek:

    "Context is everything. Especially when humour is considered. Idiocracy, Black Adder, Married With Children, Scrubs, (to name a few) all feature plenty of sexist remarks and sometimes misogynist characters. But in the context of their world and the written dialogue the jokes work without being offensive. Will Gearbox be able to pull of the same thing with Duke? Perhaps, perhaps not."

    Finding out whether they can or not is now the main reason I'm interested in Duke. (It's something we've also debated on a few recent podcasts if anyone's interested. Having played the first two hours of DNF I'm not convinced, but am still willing to be convinced by the final game.)

    --

    @CrumpetBoy:

    "Maybe this article needed a counter-article. It seems too contentious for a single opinion piece..."

    This is something I thought when I saw the scale and nature of the response on Saturday evening, actually. I don't want to drag it out particularly as I feel a lot of the obvious counter-arguments have been made on the thread, but it's something we'll bear in mind for the future for sure.

  • Timotei #408 11 months ago

    No response to him calling the readership cunts, then?

  • jstar #409 11 months ago

    To be fair to him. If you read a lot of the comments we do sound like cunts. Myself included. But then I thought he sounded like a cunt in his article. Seeing as I'm a big boy I really don't care about someone calling me a cunt and despite the fact I totally disagree with everything Rob said, and more specifically, the contradictory manner in which he argued it, I think it's somewhat pathetic for us to suddenly climb onto our high horses and start complaining about some one calling us names.



  • DwarfyP #410 11 months ago

    How many of those who took the survey have ever played Duke Nukem before, how many of them were even going to buy Duke Nukem Forever?
    I'm guessing none of them.

  • Kami #411 11 months ago

    Thanks muchly Mugwum for jumping into this messy thread. :)

    I do agree with Rob though that it is pretty overtly sexist and could have been fine without it but then again, this is Duke Nukem we're talking about - it's like watching Shameless and having a go at the stereotyping going on, or Torchwood and the massive amounts of bi-curious snogging that happens. Sometimes you know full well what you're walking into, regardless of whether you like it or not. You don't play Tekken for the fashion advice, you don't play Call of Duty for messages of peace and love and you don't play Duke Nukem for advice on how to deal with your girlfriend when she's on that special time of the month.

    It's a mountain out of a molehill. In truth, I suspect very much that all of this covers up a multitude of sins. It's been done, as I said before, to court controversy and people are falling straight into its cunningly laid trap.

    At the end of the day, this is a game that people have waited 14 years for - some pre-ordered a decade ago or more. This has to be a good game - it will be a damning, shameful catastrophe if it isn't on a fundamental level a decent FPS sans the Duke Nukem garnish.

    That they're courting the controversy suggests to me that we may be disappointed... because hey, surely people will buy this game on its merits right?

    Right?!

  • DirectAim #412 11 months ago

    Fair enough slapping women is bad but for christ sake, its what Duke Nukem is all about, its the only game this year that is actually going to make me laugh!

    A few nights ago I was flicking thru the tv channels and at 10pm I came across a film called "The Human Centipede", if you ain't seen it, look it up, its fucking sick! Now I can flick through TV and watch films where a man connects three people together using their asshole and mouth, they then feed each other by shitting into each others mouth.... its the sickest thing I have seen in a long while!

    Now that film wasn't banned, it wasn't edited, it was shown on TV for anyone to see at a time that is fairly early (on a weekend) for alot of people. Today I come online and read this bullshit, people moaning that Duke Nukem is going to be able to slap a woman on her ass, get a fucking grip, who ain't slapped a woman on her ass, my gf loves it! Games are meant to be for our personal time, time we get to chill out and do something to relax and give us a get-out from real life, I think games like Duke Nukem are fantastic for this and I hope to see more games like it in the future!

    EG here is a tip for you, run a study on the lastest and greatest games and tell me how many make you laugh! I have shown several people the Duke Nukem trailOr and every single person laughed there ass off, the only time I remember games making me laugh was 12 years ago when people didn't bitch about games!

  • jstar #413 11 months ago

    'Rob's editorial boils down to his view that it's not appropriate to make flippantly slapping a woman part of your game. '

    This is actually the problem with the article. Not counting people with mental illnesses, either computer games cause us to act in a certain way or they don't. Either we are adults who can tell the difference between real life and fantasy or we aren't. Grouping us all as 'gamers' is not helpful in this regard because some of us are adults and some of us are children. In no other industry do such disparate age groups get grouped together like that. It is incredibly unhelpful.

    Of course the online world is full of racist slurs, homophobic abuse etc etc. But mostly that is from teenagers and kids hiding behind online avatars. I don't know any adults who behave like that. Of course there must be some but proportionally much less.

    If you say 'it's not appropriate to make flippantly slapping a woman part of your game' what is ok to depict in a game? Where do you stop? Trotting out the usual suspects, GTA and MANHUNT etc what is appropriate to include? What about movies? Is it ok for Michael Winterbottom to make The Killer Inside Me? What about the way women are depicted in other games? Tomb Raider, Bayonetta, Ninja Gaiden, Every RPG ever, where women are always shown as scantily clad sex objects. Where was Rob's indignation then?

    The issue of domestic violence is a serious one. Thankfully in modern day Britain it is less prevalent than it was say 100 years ago. Of course it still occurs. Of course everything must be done to stamp it out. It is unforgivable in my view to hit a woman. But DV existed long before computer games and is caused by a whole range of things. Suggesting that a game will help spread the view that DV is ok is exactly the sort of approach that Fox News or The Daily Mail would take to this story. But in this instance instead of those two right wing institutions we have an actual games journalist employing the same tired and overly simplified tactic. Not good enough.

    And then there's the game station advert. There may well be more female gamers than male. But Rob knows as well as I do that by and large they don't buy their games in Gamestation. They buy them on the app store. Now of course a more egalitarian ad campaign would be 'cheaper than a partner' but then we are getting into policeperson and chairperson territory.

    Anyway, I'm kind of repeating myself and others but I'm trying to illustrate that it's not so much what Rob said but the way he said it and his reasoning behind it. That article was just plain bad journalism. It was sensationalist, didn't even begin to explore the issue in full, and conveniently glossed over certain truths in order to make it's point. Reading the article anyone can see that. And it is particularly disappointing that the editor of the website did not see that and act accordingly.
    Edited by 1 at 28/03/11 @ 09:27

  • PlugMonkey #414 11 months ago

    "Am I the only one who thought there was more involved than a spanked bottom based on this article?"

    I knew what was involved in the game, but exactly how Fahey has managed to swing it around to domestic violence, I have no clue.

    I slap my girlfriend on the bum from time to time. It's lighthearted and inoffensive. I don't think it makes me guilty of domestic abuse. I don't think she does either. If I slapped her in any other manner, she would most likely break my arm. And yet here I am, typing this two handed.

  • varsas #415 11 months ago

    @Mugwum: Thanks for posting. If any of the people commenting here had listened to the podcast they might have already understood some of the context you re-iterate here.

    @Timotei: "No response to him calling the readership cunts, then?"

    I'm not sure Rob does need to apologise because there are a lot of comments that are personal attacks rather than debate the issue.

  • UsernamePending #416 11 months ago

    @ Mugwum

    Your "clarification" does nothing to absolve Rob Fahey's sexist, outrageous attacks on Twitter about your readership, or really respond to the points raised in the comments here.

    Eurogamer (to me) has become the place for the worst sort of fanboy-baiting, empty-headed video-games "journalism". It's rather like watching "car-crash-tv", as made by idiots.

    You are responsible for this, as site editor. Are you proud of yourself?

  • charming_fox #417 11 months ago

    I'd like to comment on this but apparently I'm a CUNT... as are you!

  • varsas #418 11 months ago

    @jstar: I'm not sure we can equate the portrayal of women to the portrayal of violence in game. If there was a game that portrayed an ethnic minority as weak throughout, in a condescending way and had the gamer reinforce this latter aspect would that be acceptable?

  • SG #419 11 months ago

    Good grief, after finishing reading this article, I see that the author is clearly as bad as that mum that complained about the 'scary' Prince of Persia ad on the side of a bus scaring her child. It's more mature to not make a big issue out of it, just as it isn't a big issue for drugs to be sold in games (whilst a lot of families are torn apart by them in real life) for instance.

  • jstar #420 11 months ago

    @varsas

    Well gentlemen of middle eastern origin are not exactly represented in a particularly fair and balanced way in games. In fact were I to base my world view on the FPSs I have played I would have a decidedly unfavourable opinion of them. Luckily I am an adult though and can tell the difference between Call of Duty and the real world.

    Sorry I didn't really answer your question. It must be acceptable because there are so many games that already do that. But that has no bearing on the real world. Just like I don't get offended when Hollywood films always peg the English actor as the bad guy. It's not real.
    Edited by 1 at 28/03/11 @ 09:55

  • defdaz #421 11 months ago

    Just to reiterate - Duke is a sexist character in a comedic environment, just as there are many sexist or racist character portrayed in all the other entertainment mediums in comedic, dramatic or serious situations. This allows us to ridcule, comment and reflect upon these issues and absolutely needs to be allowed, recognised and applauded.

    Why is this so hard for some people to understand?

  • schnide #422 11 months ago

    @varsas

    I'm not sure that the joke is in portraying women as weak is it? On my understanding, the joke (and whether you find it funny or not, that doesn't stop you assessing it) is on Duke's ignorance in thinking that women are weak, and the sheer audacity of him thinking he can resolve it by spanking her on the ass.

  • defdaz #423 11 months ago

    PS Tom, you can't really allow Rob to get away with calling us "Selfish, ignorant, fuckwitted white male whinging. Cunts.", can you?

    I'm pretty sure I won't be the only one avoiding EG if he's allowed to continue to contribute to this site.

  • schnide #424 11 months ago

    @defdaz

    I think an apology to those offended would be enough after the article criticises Gamestation for not doing the same thing.

  • uknortherner2000 #425 11 months ago

    @varsas: "I'm not sure Rob does need to apologise because there are a lot of comments that are personal attacks rather than debate the issue."

    Considering that Rob himself has admitted on his Twitter he doesn't read the comments, how would he know? If I was to call a random stranger on the street a cunt, I'd be typing this from my hospital bed now.

    The fact remains, he has labeled EG's readers "cunts", and it seems that the management are happy with it. I wonder if the advertisers are?

  • SG #426 11 months ago

    In Britain, we've had the unfortunate spectacle of games retail chain Gamestation running an advertising campaign featuring the slogan "Cheaper than your girlfriend", and not even having the good grace to admit the misstep when confronted.

    Women can have girlfriends too. Isn't it equally as ignorant to assume that it's only directed at heterosexual men? According to your own logic, the ad is only assuming a sexual orientation of a gamer, not the gender.

  • FortysixterUK #427 11 months ago

    This article appears to be taking a very extreme stance against something that is not serious, or implied to be serious in anyway. That something is the slap on the bottom that Duke apparently administers, is obviously kept within themes of the very tongue in cheek gameplay and should not be taken as anything else as entertainment.

    I work in a public sector service that deals with domestic violence everyday, the description of what happens in this game, and the reality of what happens in real life are worlds apart. I would urge the writer of this article to get a firm grip on reality and pray that they never has to deal with the victims or perpetrators of domestic violence IN REAL LIFE.

    If Dukes developers want to balance any issues here ( I don't believe there are any issues here), do a female version of Duke for this game mode who has to rescue the guys , and calms them down in the same way. Or simply put guys in who also need to be rescued and dealt with by Duke in the same way.

    I can only assume the article has been written to encourage a vast forum thread , which it has managed to do. A simple publicity stunt maybe ?

    I would urge the rest of you reading this article or writing in this forum to remain firmly grounded in reality and ignore the contents of this truly pointless article.
    Edited by 1 at 28/03/11 @ 10:14

  • varsas #428 11 months ago

    @schnide: I think it depends on how the joke is presented in the game. This is what's been debated in the podcast a couple of times and what Mugwum has mentioned.

    @uknortherner2000: He says he didn't "@Cool_Britannia Aw, poor babies! Of course, that's not actually what I said - I said that over-privileged moaning white guys are cunts."
    Edited by 1 at 28/03/11 @ 10:20

  • varsas #429 11 months ago

    Regarding Rob's "cunt" comment, reading the feed he says "The latter of those arguments is particularly odious. Selfish, ignorant, fuckwitted white male whinging. Cunts." where the latter argument is posted by gamewank_jim: "A couple of "Oh come on guys it's Duke Nukem" responses so far :/".

    It's clear that he's NOT calling the EG readers cunts but rather having a go at those that just say "It's just Duke Nukem" as if that gives the game a pass on this topic.
    Edited by 1 at 28/03/11 @ 10:27

  • coolbritannia #430 11 months ago

    Mugwum, the only thing we want your comment on is: "Selfish, ignorant, fuckwitted white male whinging. Cunts."

    Discuss.

    p.s. any black , asian, hispanic etc commentators in this comments thread? I don't usually give a toss about race but I'd love to prove Rob wrong.

  • PlugMonkey #431 11 months ago

    He's also complaining that people will twist anything he says.

    What? Like twisting 'horseplay' into 'domestic violence', eh? Rob?

    @ Fortysixter

    I don't think this is a cynical comments thread grabber. It's worse than that. It's pseudo-intellectual moralising, where the author sneers down from his soap box at anyone who disagrees and announces that it's merely because they aren't as enlightened a human being as he is.

    Fahey has taken something, twisted into something else and then got duly outraged at his creation. We don't disagree with your morality, my good man. We disagree with your twisted creation.

    If anybody missed it, I would invite people to spin back to comment #2 on this thread, which pretty much nailed it.

    Edit: Formatting fail. :(
    Edited by 1 at 28/03/11 @ 10:41

  • varsas #432 11 months ago

    @oolbritannia: Rob isn't referring to the EG readership. As I stated he's referring to those that use the "It's just Duke Nukem" argument when defending the game.

  • defdaz #433 11 months ago

    @varsas The point they're trying to make is that Duke Nukem is a satire, with a chauvanistic sexist as the main character in a comedic setting. Him slapping arses and all the rest of it is the entire point.

    Comedic settings are just as valid as serious or dramatic ones for allowing public recognition and comment upon these issues and should not be oppressed just because someone like Rob can't understand how this can be.

  • defdaz #434 11 months ago

    PS Since it seems the vast majority is in disagreement with him I suspect that we the vast majority do fall under what he would term as cunts. Nice chap.

  • PixelPirate #435 11 months ago

    ..The vast, vast majority of gamers are not murderers..

    I did not know that

    //sarcasm

  • varsas #436 11 months ago

    @defdaz: I think Rob does understand this; certainly Mugwum does and he has stated several times that that is fine if it's truly how the game plays out. The question on whether it truly is satire will depend on how it's executed in the final game.

  • linea #437 11 months ago

    @defdaz

    a) Rob specifically says that he's not in favour of censorship in the article, so any criticism of him as some kind of moral crusader is wide of the mark- he says he finds it objectionable, which is different

    b) What he's objecting to is not necessarily the act of a slap per se, but the act of slapping a hysterical woman to calm her down. I suspect he'd have no objection to slaps on the bum in other contexts

  • el_pollo_diablo #438 11 months ago

    The word cunt is considered by many people (ie. not just Germain Greer) as being misogynist in the extreme.
    Now whether you agree with that or not you should be aware of it. I think most people are. So for the author of an article that rightly berates misogyny to then refer to a few readers as cunts, regardless of it occurring offsite (but still in public), does possibly weaken his main point.

    Which is not to say that I think it was either a bad article, or that he's not allowed to say what he likes on twitter. But be consistent.

  • Hermiod #439 11 months ago

    Fahey can find whatever he likes objectionable.

    Just as I can find people who blame 'white male privilege' for all of the world's problems objectionable. That particular world view is more sexist than Custer's Revenge, let alone Duke Nukem.

  • legendmir #440 11 months ago

    come away from this comments thread feeling like a playful spank is completely ok and everyone finds it funny... maybe i should try it on some of the women in my office...? :p

  • schnide #441 11 months ago

    @legendmir

    If you turn yourself into a musclebound gunslinging hero who shoots pigs with shrinkrays, you go for it!

  • defdaz #442 11 months ago

    @linea You're missing the point that Duke is a chauvanistic pig who would slap her arse. This is an intentionally sexist character in a satire. This allows us (as we're doing in this thread!) to commentate on this sort of behaviour in real life. We need these mediums to do this - by not having games like Duke or comedic / realistic / dramatic tellings of these issues we would miss out on very effective ways to deal with these issues in reality.

  • Ryuken #443 11 months ago

    It's clear that he's NOT calling the EG readers cunts but rather having a go at those that just say "It's just Duke Nukem" as if that gives the game a pass on this topic.

    Like that would make his words excusable. I'd love to know what he thought about the strippers and trapped babes in DN3D then. It IS just Duke Nukem, what DNF is showing isn't anything new in my book. If he's offended by the slapping-on-the-ass-to-calm-the-babe-down feature then I'd say he has been sleeping under a rock for several years. Then again, most of these editorials often "tell" us someting we've known for years anyway.

  • RoOhDaMite #444 11 months ago

    I doubt he really meant to label EG readers cunts.
    He was just cursing out loud, because that's what immature people do when confronted with their flaws. I remember my sister smacking me in the face once she ran out of arguments during a discussion (now that's what I call domestic violence) I just went off because I feel I'm better than that. I doubt our dear friend Rob A.K.A. Stompy (who sure needs therapy) would have responded in the same manner.

  • Hermiod #445 11 months ago

    @FortySixterUK - One small problem with your point, Duke can't rescue any males because they've all been turned in to Pig Cops.

    Which really highlights a problem with this whole debate and most debates like it I've ever seen, it's all just a little too gynocentric. If something is offensive to women in a small way that will be allowed to disguise the ways in which it's much more offensive to men.

    We fall in to this trap over and over again.

  • Manic_Miner #446 11 months ago

    450 comments and still going? Whatever you think of Rob's article, I'll bet his editor thinks it's a success.

    / on topic

    When women I know freak out, I find a nice cup of tea does the job.

  • disappointed #447 11 months ago

    Is the games industry sexist?
    Yes.

    Is DNF the ultimate embodiment of this archaic attitude?
    Remains to be seen but the promotion of the game to date points to yes.

    Would removing the spanking from the CTB game mode significantly mitigate the sexism in DNF?
    I doubt it.

    I think attacking the sexism in the industry is fundamentally the wrong approach. Instead, we should be promoting those games which sport a more contemporary, inclusive attitude. We need more games which are adult in the truest sense of the word.

    In time, the vuvuzela drone of the adolescent horde will fade into the background. The misogyny that currently drives the games industry will be sidelined - of no more concern than the straight-to-dvd gross out comedies that pepper Hollywood's output.
    Edited by 1 at 28/03/11 @ 11:44

  • coolbritannia #448 11 months ago

    Rob has responded to me with a series of tweets:

    'Aw, poor babies! Of course, that's not actually what I said - I said that over-privileged moaning white guys are cunts'

    'Some of Eg's readership may fall into that bracket. That's not the same as saying 'the EG readership are cunts'

    'But then anything I say, here or in the article, will have been twisted beyond recognition in the comments clusterfuck'

  • crisotunity #449 11 months ago

    @mugwum
    Thank you for at least making some effort to communicate. I'm afraid that you still don't get it.
    - If your writer is arguing that video games could influence people to do nasty things through normalisation or imitation, let's discuss (submitting evidence) how DN's butt slapping influences domestic violence and how COD influences the abuse of civilians by soldiers seeking to turn themselves into super-men with absolute control. There is a deep debate to be had, but you will need to do some serious research and take on the big publishing boys in the process.

    - If your writer is arguing that video games do not influence people to do nasty things directly or indirectly, but the industry should grow the hell up because depicting certain actions is beyond the bounds of good taste, say so clearly (and I will support you to the end). Again, have the guts to take on some of the biggest franchises of our era.

    - If your writer wishes to discuss how a multi-billion pound industry is being run worse than a corner-shop and how Duke Nukem has been a contributor to this tradition (eg, http://ar stechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/... for comedy value) again, please do. My job is completely unrelated to yours, but it's some consolation to read about these grade A mess-ups (ie, it's not just me).

    As I said in another post, Eurogamer is an excellent space to debate any of these issues. However, you need better writing and clearer thinking. Otherwise, these articles will just come across as cries for help from writers desperate for another job, away from cnuts like us.
    Edited by 1 at 28/03/11 @ 11:52

  • Hermiod #450 11 months ago

    @disappointed - I agree that we should celebrate studios like Valve, for instance and their games like Left 4 Dead which have well portrayed female characters. Left 4 Dead, despite the fact that it's a very violent FPS, has an unusually high number of female players according to Valve's own research, too.

    Valve found that the game appeals to not just individual women, but four player teams of women as it emphasizes teamwork and communication.

  • varsas #451 11 months ago

    @Ryuken: "It IS just Duke Nukem, what DNF is showing isn't anything new in my book."

    It's nothing new but in this day and age should a game with this mentality be given free reign. A point being made in the article is that we should have moved on or grown up by now.

    There seems to be a lot of focus on the slap bottom equated to beating of women rather than the general thrust of the article regarding sexism.

  • RoOhDaMite #452 11 months ago

    @ Hermoid
    I aggree with you on celebrating Valve games, and I do. But I don't get why we can't enjoy Duke Nukem too.
    I feel there is perfectly nothing wrong in having some stupid fun with games. And the diversity will make it a mature industry, not the censorship.

  • Hermiod #453 11 months ago

    @varsas - You're right, the games industry is sexist.

    I mean, let's look at some of the other major releases lately - like Killzone 3 and Halo: Reach. Both portray the human military of the future as still being almost exclusively male (with a couple of minor exceptions like KZ3's Jammer who appears to be a pilot rather than front line infantry). Killzone 3 requires you to play as a male soldier, leading teams of male soldiers in to situations where they will almost certainly be killed.

    The Halo games typically also have the relatively low ranking Master Chief, the ODSTs and Noble 6 all reporting to female commanding officers in their games.

    Another example, the Command & Conquer: Red Alert games (and Command & Conquer 3 as well) have female commando units whose lives must be preserved at all costs in order to complete missions in which they appear, typically at the cost of 'lesser' male soldiers.

    And then there's Duke. If Duke does one thing more wrong than anything else it's that he's left fighting alone after all the other men are turned in Pig Cops.

    To paraphrase Starship Troopers - men keep dying, women keep flying.

    Call of Duty and other modern or historical FPS games can at least make the excuse that they're based in a reality where men do indeed do most of the dying in real life combat situations. Halo, Killzone and a million other science fiction and fantasy combat games have no such excuse. They all perpetuate the view that male lives are expendable.

    @RoHoDaMite - I'm not saying people shouldn't enjoy Duke at all.
    Edited by 1 at 28/03/11 @ 12:14

  • RoOhDaMite #454 11 months ago

    @ varsas
    "It's nothing new but in this day and age should a game with this mentality be given free reign."

    Abso-Fucking-Lutely!
    There ought to be a place for the Duke. If you don't like it, then just don't play it.
    You ain't gonna see me watch "Sex and the City" either.
    The outdated mentality thing is part of its appeal adding to the silliness.

    In the name of outdated mentality humor watch this:

    [link url=http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=8FFQ_g8OoQM
    ]http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=8FFQ_g8OoQM
    [/link]

  • PlugMonkey #455 11 months ago

    @ varsas
    "It's nothing new but in this day and age should a game with this mentality be given free reign. A point being made in the article is that we should have moved on or grown up by now."

    Why? Can't we have harmless, silly things? I don't see how this feature in DNF is radically more severe than, say, the way Machete seduces, video tapes and kidnaps a mother AND daughter in the movie of the same name. That's not acceptable behaviour in the real world, but all three characters are ridiculous exploitation stereotypes, and the whole thing is a very, very silly sequence in a very, very silly film. That's just how Machete rolls.

    I don't want to live in a 'grown up' world where we're not allowed very, very silly things like Machete or Duke Nukem anymore.

    "There seems to be a lot of focus on the slap bottom equated to beating of women rather than the general thrust of the article regarding sexism".

    Because that is the reference that the article uses in making its point about sexism. Someone can't expect me to seriously debate their point when they have essentially fabricated their evidence for it. I'm inevitably going to start right there with the fabrication of evidence: the creation of a ridiculous and non-existent link.

  • coolbritannia #456 11 months ago

    Using Halo in a debate about sexism will backfire.

    The architect of humanity's victory is Dr Halsey, female. The genius AI that is Master Chiefs brain is Cortana, portrayed as female.

    There are female marines, female Spartans (Kat, Kelly etc), Miranda Keyes took the reigns from her father, Jacob Keyes, proving a woman can captain a ship as good as a man. Multiplayer lets you have a male or female spartan voice too.

    There is NO sexism in Halo.

  • Hermiod #457 11 months ago

    @coolbritannia - That's the problem. Yes there are female Spartans, yes there are female ship commanders and female this and female that. We have a similar situation in today's modern military.

    What there largely isn't is female infantry, the people most likely to be involved in close quarters combat where they're likely to be killed. This isn't about the presence of female characters in those games, it's about the situations in which they are involved.

    In Halo, at least, there are a small number but Killzone 3 lacks them almost entirely. I could name a great many other similar games which go out of their way to not put female characters in jeopardy and place great emphasis on protecting those characters when they do.

    I mentioned the Command & Conquer games - each playable faction in all of the C&C games has a cheap, expendable infantry unit. With the exception of the Scrin in C&C3 all of those units are exclusively male.

    Video games do a lot to perpetuate the idea that male lives are less valuable than female. After all, this whole discussion is based on a game where you slap a woman on the backside - in the same game the entire male population of Earth has been turned in to Pigs.

  • Riggers #458 11 months ago

    "If your writer is arguing that video games could influence people to do nasty things through normalisation or imitation, let's discuss (submitting evidence) how DN's butt slapping influences domestic violence and how COD influences the abuse of civilians by soldiers seeking to turn themselves into super-men with absolute control."

    Not played it, but can you kill civilians in any of the Call of Duty games? The only example that springs to mind is the No Russian campaign, which comes with a warning about disturbing content and is skippable.

    This is going to get me negged to hell, but for me, there's a huge difference between killing or harming characters in-game that are combatants that are trying to kill your character, and slapping a non-combatant because they're 'freaking out'. The fact that it's labelled 'reassuring' and that people are also comparing it to playful sexual bottom spanking muddies the waters further - so to bring a freaking out woman under control, you have to spank her, but don't worry, she likes it.

    I'm probably a little over-sensitive about it as I have a friend that was in an abusive relationship for years, and her ex thought that hitting her was a good way of exercising control over her when she did 'unreasonable things', like get back half an hour later than planned or talk to old school friends at a party who happened to be male. Dismissing that kind of behaviour as 'satire' gets a bit difficult when you've witnessed the aftermath.

    For me it's a crying shame, because I bloody loved Borderland. But with DNF, in addition to making me feel a bit uncomfortable, it's also embarrassing in a Jim Davidson/Bernard Manning/Roy Chubby Brown sort of way. I'm hoping that the actual game doesn't come off as badly as it's been presented, but I'm not holding my breath.

  • Hermiod #459 11 months ago

    @Riggers - it's not so much killing people who are trying to kill you, it's the gender split of the people fighting alongside you and what roles they are employed in.

    In most games, the average member of the Expendable Soldier class will be male.

  • username84 #460 11 months ago

    Good article. Although sadly looks as if it may be a bit above some of your readers comprehension.

  • coolbritannia #461 11 months ago

    SPOILAGE!

    In fact, Halo Reach features the most pointless Spartan death ever, Kat taking a round through the head not in combat. The essence of a disposable soldier. Also puts a round through the Halo is sexist debate too...

  • Hermiod #462 11 months ago

    @CoolBritania - All of the Spartans die in the game. That much was predetermined by the series' canon.

    It's still one character in one game in a series which typically depicts its key female characters as authority figures (like Halsey, Keyes, Cortana etc) and very rarely as ordinary grunts.

    The point is not that there are no women in the game or that you can't play as a female character - both of those statements are untrue - it's the roles those women play.

    I'm not singling out that Halo series either, as I've said there are a great many games which portray males as expendable in a much more pronounced way.

  • StolenGlory #463 11 months ago

    "The latter of those arguments is particularly odious. Selfish, ignorant, fuckwitted white male whinging. Cunts."

    LOL U Mad?

    In all seriousness though and on the off-chance that you decide to read this; I am glad with fiber of my being that these comments make you angry; really I am. With any luck you're foaming at the mouth now and then with additional luck, you'll hopefully drown in it you sloppy piece of afterbirth.

    Industry professional huh? Really...

    EDIT: Oh, and for the record I have my own issues/opinion with the article, I just think that calling a portion of the EG readership 'cunts' because they don't agree with the tripe that you submitted is uncalled for.
    Edited by 2 at 28/03/11 @ 13:47

  • crisotunity #464 11 months ago

    @Riggers
    I have not negged you. I think there is a very serious discussion to be had around the issues you mention.
    You are right: with a few exceptions you are not required to kill civilians in CoD. However, it could be argued (not by me) that the real life, sadistic "civilian hunting games" the real life US soldiers were involved in, re-created the game conditions which helped normalise the horrific acts they perpetrated. I think that the writer was making a similar point: if you artificially normalise a certain way of thinking about things (ie, "if s/he doesn't look like me, shoot it" in CoD; or "women need a spanking to calm down" in DN) then human beings will "re-format" and re-think the world around them in a way that will legitimise their actions by reference to those artificial norms.
    Like I said, this is not neccessarily how I see things, BUT I totally agree with you: I think there is alot more to this debate than just dismissing everything with "well I have been playing games for 20 years and have not killed/beaten up anyone, therefore everything goes".
    And the article made a pig's ear out of it.

  • Riggers #465 11 months ago

    "It's still one character in one game in a series which typically depicts its key female characters as authority figures (like Halsey, Keyes, Cortana etc) and very rarely as ordinary grunts.

    The point is not that there are no women in the game or that you can't play as a female character - both of those statements are untrue - it's the roles those women play."

    I remember with Gears of War Cliffy B said that he felt uncomfortable having female Gears in-game because of the lancers - he didn't think having a woman being chainsawed in half was appropriate. As far as I'm concerned, if she's shooting you she's fair game! I know they justified it story-wise by saying that because the human race was on the brink of extinction, all of the women were expected to have and raise children, and all of the men were expected to sign up for military service or be exiled. I know some people said that was sexist ("Why can't women fight?";), but from a sci-fi futuristic distopia point of view it made sense... and is staying home and having kids any worse than being *forced* to go and fight a losing war?

    From a technical point of view, quite often the combat characters are male because having female ones requires extra animations on a completely different rig, whereas you can have a variety of male characters all using the same rig...

  • charming_fox #466 11 months ago

    Jesus Christ.... normal people don't hit women, whether they play games or not.

  • byakuya83 #467 11 months ago

    at least the non-white readers of eurogamer will escape rob's wrath!

  • Hermiod #468 11 months ago

    @Riggers - of course there are technical arguments to be made, but Cliffy B's attitude says it all really.

    I'll give some games some credit. Half-Life 2 has female resistance members who can be killed just as easily as male ones and the death of a certain male character is treated as just as the death of prominent female characters would be in other video games.

    Dragon Age Origins has a particularly curious example where all of the men of a village are expected to defend it against an impending attack while the females take shelter. It's curious because it's not that way throughout the rest of the game - there are plenty of female warriors throughout.

    Of course, this attitude exists well beyond video games. It pervades every form of entertainment because it's the way we're conditioned to think.

  • PlugMonkey #469 11 months ago

    @ charming_fox
    "Jesus Christ.... normal people don't hit women, whether they play games or not."

    Intriguing. You seem to have ignored both the majority of the article, and the ensuing 9 pages of comments.

    Define "hit" for me please.

  • Sodding_Gamer #470 11 months ago

    Rob you're a tit.

    Like you said about COD. They called MW2 a realistic shooter... and there is a level where you slaughter thousands of civilians.... YES it gave you the option to opt out, but who really opted out?! Nobody. I never opted out simply because I know how short cod campaigns are and didn't wanna miss out on an extra half hour of the campaign LOL.

    However Duke, is over the top as foook. And I think slapping one "babe" is way more tolerable than killing thousands of civilians pretending to be a terrorist. You twat.

  • Godofmosquitos #471 11 months ago

    This is Duke Nukem. Rob, you have obviously never played Duke Nukem 3D. You say you have, I don't believe you. Satirical sexism is half the bloody franchise. That's what Duke Nukem is about. You cannot make a Duke Nukem game without it. It's like making "The Man Show" and asking them to be about "a constructive dialogue between men and women" instead of the sexist satire it is. And more importantly - it's saying that there should be no room for such kinds of satire, which is rubbish.

    Gearbox is doing 'Capture The Babe'-mode, because that kind of low-hanging slapstick humor is what constitutes Duke Nukem. As a whole. The whole franchise. That's what it is. You don't like that kind of humor, your call. But don't run around playing a wise-arse about a product you apparently consider yourself too high and mighty to actually research in it's whole before you write about it. Otherwise you would have known what I wrote above, and you wouldn't have wasted everyone's time, including your own, by writing this article.
    Edited by 1 at 28/03/11 @ 14:52

  • charming_fox #472 11 months ago

    Plug Monkey, on the contrary, i've read through the vast majority of the comments and sadly read the whole of the sham article, there was a line along the lines of "commonly held value that it is OK to hit women" or something similar that is just total nonsense, since when is this a commonly held value and how does that have anything to do with a computer game? My point was that wether I'm beheading angels in Bayonetta, running over civillians in GTA or shooting people in the face in an FPS there's no harm done in normal adults whose values are not influenced by media. Seriously, as long as any media is marketed appropriately (ie not to an age group who may be easily influenced) then there should be no issue at all. Games, film, music, literature should be free to be as politically correct or incorrect as it likes and the audence decides indivually what it likes or doesn't like.

    Lots of people like South Park, yet its existence doesn't mean the decay of intelligent TV production, why the hell should the existence of a potentially sexist computer game be any different, why are we always saying things like "xxx is the LAST thign gaming needs!" it shouldn't matter.

  • coolbritannia #473 11 months ago

    And Miranda Keyes dies as a grunt, shot in the back. And you CAN play Noble 6 as a woman if you so choose, it's entirely up to you.

    If you're female in multiplayer, you're female in game. Halo does not discriminate.

  • PlugMonkey #474 11 months ago

    @ charming_fox

    Ah, now I see what you're driving at. Consider my neck well and truly wound in.

  • linea #475 11 months ago

    @defdaz (#451) I'm not missing the point at all. If it were an arse-slap alone it might be (vaguely) defensible, but it's a slap to shut a woman up.

    By the way, I also asked a female friend of mine what she thought (stressing the fact that it was supposed to be light-hearted in a Carry On sort of way). She was utterly horrified.

    She works for the part of social services that deals with domestic abuse, and made the point that every day she encounters women, men and children who exist in an environment where hitting a woman to shut her up is not considered domestic abuse. Many of these women have endured decades of this and often it's only flagged up when they're hospitalised because they consider it normal. She pointed out that although it might be the case for many people (and I suspect EG readers are mostly in this group) that it is obvious that that sort of thing is utterly abhorrent and so the whole thing seems ridiculous , there are still, in the UK in 2011, large segments of society where it's considered OK to beat your wife (and kids), and considered in this context, the 'joke' is maybe not quite so funny.

  • Hermiod #476 11 months ago

    @coolbritannia - I think you're missing the point somewhat. Again, it is not that there are no female characters in the game or that they can't be killed.

    It's not the named characters that are an issue, it's the average Joe soldier fighting alongside you. Halo is a little better than other games in this regard (there were minor soldiers voiced by people like Michelle Rodriguez who can die).

    It's the overall portrayal in many games of fictional military organisations employing still almost exclusively male soldiers in front line combat roles, the kind of roles that are exclusively (by law) male in the real British and American armies.

    These games still perpetuate the idea that male lives have less value than female lives, and will continue to do so even in to the distant future.

    It's not necessary for you to keep defending Halo - Killzone, Command & Conquer and many other games are a lot worse.

  • charming_fox #477 11 months ago

    No worries plug monkey, you're neck is lovely!

  • Salvasian #478 11 months ago

    Wow, whatever happened to the old Eurogame? The one with the sense of humour; it was quirky, witty, and not particularly PC. This has to be one of the worst articles I have ever had the misfortune to read, and only comment to beg Euro to return to its roots and abandon this PC-wank bullshit! (hope I didn't offend anyone... please... please... don't let anyone be offended, lets all be friends)
    Edited by 1 at 28/03/11 @ 15:15

  • Asur11 #479 11 months ago

    So carrying off a squirming young woman is OK but slapping her on the buttocks is not?

    I'll try to remember that.

  • PlugMonkey #480 11 months ago

    @ linea

    But the issue people on this forum have is that what is being suggested in the game is most definitely NOT "hitting a woman to shut her up", which very much suggests an individual attempting to express themselves and then being forceably and violently repressed.

    It's not even close to "hitting a woman to shut her up", because neither the "hitting a woman" nor the "shutting her up" parts of the statement are accurate.

    I mentioned in an earlier post that I sometimes give the girlfriend a playful slap on the rear.

    I sometimes even do this to indicate that she's standing in the way.

    Put this through the Fahey Filter, and suddenly I abuse my girlfriend by literally beating her just because I want to get across the kitchen. Who could POSSIBLY condone HITTING a WOMAN just because you want to get into the fridge? I'm a monster.
    Edited by 1 at 28/03/11 @ 15:23

  • Hermiod #481 11 months ago

    How about we not hit anyone and stop making women a special case?

  • linea #482 11 months ago

    @Plugmonkey I didn't use the word 'hit'. I'm talking about the (carefully-worded)- 'slapping a woman to shut her up'.

    That's the purpose of the slap in the game- to stop the woman from complaining about being abducted and render her compliant. That's not exaggeration, that's completely accurate. It's not about the violence of the action (as I said, I don't object to slaps on the bum in an appropriate context), it's about the power setup of the whole situation and the implied values. I don't think the (very limited) hilarity of the joke justifies itself.

    And calling it a satire doesn't give it a free pass. I very much doubt Duke will be satirical- it's going to be cartoonishly crude and funny in a low-brow sort of way but I don't think it'll conform to any reasonable definition of satire- the older games didn't (though we shall see).

    By the way, I think that things can be fckn hilariously funny and still be sort of objectionable. I absolutely LOVE Derek and Clive but there are still a few bits where I think they've crossed the line a bit. I'm never sure how to feel about this for example:

    [link url=http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=0A8lm3CHe4k
    ]http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=0A8lm3CHe4k
    [/link]

    It's incredibly funny but I always feel a bit odd about it...

  • r1000009 #483 11 months ago

    1) this story is hard to comment on as it's not out yet and therefore can't be played. i slap my wife's bottom sometimes and trust me, it's not wife beating. i don;t know which the Duke is more closely emulating.

    2) saying Call of Duty is clearly fantasy whereas the Duke Nuken bum slapping is based in reality is a ludicrous argument.

    In CoD you go to locations such as Afganistan as an American in the contemporary miltary and shoot terrorists.
    In the last Duke Nukem I used a jet pack to fly around a stadium firing rockets a a GIANT ALIEN PIG.

    Seriously, which one of those most closely resembles the news you watched today?




  • StolenGlory #484 11 months ago

    Rob also completely missed the fucking point about the context in which said rectum-slapping takes place.

    It takes place in a fucking alien apocalypse, where the aliens are mostly giant pigs and the humour is as toilet-ridden as the places Duke drinks from to replenish his health.

    This isn't a gritty shooter that fictionalises current events - this is the balls to the wall, Sci-Fi cheese-tastic shooter with the same PC sensibilities as your grandfather that it always has been. Also, trying to pull said slapping out of context by A) frequently creating ambiguity in the article by 'forgetting' to remind the reader that it is the ass that being slapped and no other part of the anatomy and B) suggesting that this is somehow some sort of issue degrading to women where in the same game you have twin lesbian schoolgirls that pander to Duke's every need, is an argument as ridiciously selective with it's facts, as Fox News were with the Bulletstorm debacle.

  • PlugMonkey #485 11 months ago

    My apologies. "Slap".

    However, I would again disagree that "slapping a woman to shut her up" is an accurate description of the game content, as it comes loaded with context that is not there. "Slapping" alone implies a strike to the face. "He slapped her" means "he struck her across the face with the palm of his hand". "To shut someone up", as I've already said, carries a connotation that doesn't exist in the game. That phrase in isolation does NOT describe the content.

    Use a different description, say, "he spanked her to stop her wiggling" and you'd have something that, if said to someone as an isolated statement, would prompt a lot less horror and revulsion. You are no longer invoking the images of domestic abuse that you get with "he slapped her to shut her up". Do you see what I mean?

    Again:

    That's the purpose of the slap in the game- to stop the woman from complaining about being abducted and render her compliant. That's not exaggeration, that's completely accurate.

    Not an exaggeration? Well, you've added the word abducted. Changed "freak out" to "complain" and thrown in a "render her compliant". You've taken something that could easily be playful and turned it into something very different, sinister even, with your choice of phrasing. Exactly as I did with my example of myself and my girlfriend squeezing past each other in the kitchen. Am I "patting her on the rump to let her know I'm coming past", or am I "slapping" her because she's "in my way". Ooh. That sounds a bit nasty all of a sudden. Well, if she doesn't like it I guess she'd better learn to "stay out of my way". Uh-oh. That's getting even worse.

    Yes, it's misogynistic. It's objectifying a woman as a sex object. But that's true of just carrying her off as a prize, and nobody's denying any of that.

    What it definitely isn't doing is reinforcing "something which, sadly, happens every day in countless households around the world." What? Spanking and horseplay? If all your friend in social services had to deal with was a bit of spanking and horseplay, I imagine her job would be a hell of a lot easier.

    Context. Context is very important.

  • linea #486 11 months ago

    Is 'abducted' not an appropriate word to use for a game mode where you grab a woman, put her over your shoulder, and run off with her to your base?

    Not sure what word *is* appropriate...

  • Keza #487 11 months ago

    A few people have asked what I or Ellie think of this; as I've not played the game, I don't think it's prudent to answer that yet. I did write something about what I think about the controversy, though, and the reasons behind it, should anyone be interested: http://wp.me/pUf9I-2b

  • Svecke #488 11 months ago

    @Keza, you wrote brilliantly about all this. Much less black/white and with more reflection on the whole issue. Thank you for showing that there are better journalists at eurogamer.

  • coolbritannia #489 11 months ago

    @ Keza, a good article, I'd like to think I occupy that middle ground. Capture the babe in anything other than Duke Nukem would certainly raise an eyebrow from me, but when the game is sexism focused, it seemed like a cheap shot. Rob's response only galvanised the two camps in to more extreme rhetoric.

    In short, yours was better.

  • ShelbySoul #490 11 months ago

    I would call myself a feminist, and I've always been interested in real womens issues, e.g., they pay gap, the subjugation of women in Africa and the Middle East. But stuff like this always really annoys me. For one, John seems to be likening, or at least comparing "Duke Nukem" to actual domestic violence. Domestic violence is a real issue which traumatises women and happens every day, and bringing it into arguments about computer games is distasteful and disrespectful to real survivors.

    This is the problem with these Keyboard Warrior feminists who'd rather get into hysterical arguments about "dickwolves" than have to deal with real women's issues, like Female Genital Mutilation, and the White Knights who come out to defend them. Duke Nukem is a silly action game for little boys, and I think anyone who actually cares about feminism, male or female, should stop chasing these pointless crusades against people making jokes. It cheapens the feminist cause, and only makes us look like a bunch of po faced, misandrist harridans, which actually CAUSES MISOGYNY a damn sight more than any "capture the babe" fantasy game.

  • EmmelinePankhurst #491 11 months ago

    I have been so enraged by this article that I felt moved to register here on Eurogamer to express my absolute disgust with Duke Nukem Forever and all similar testerone-filled brain-wash software that simply destroy adolescent minds.

    Now, I am not afraid to admit that I am both a woman, and a gamer. I do not consider myself a militant feminist, although I do run a woman's support group here in my native Tunbridge Wells. I am not a stereotype, I am not a barbie girl or a masculine lesbian, and I have had a wide variety of male sexual partners, thank you very much. However, none of the above alters the fact that I hate seeing craven misogyny in the popular media.

    This new "Duke Nukem" game is even worse than the norm, though. I play a lot of games, often through gritted teeth. Mafia II particularly annoyed me, due to its treatment of women as prostitutes or creatures to be ogled at in a magazine. Hitman: Blood Money showed both the major protaganist and antaganist as being male, with the protaganist being a kind of "daddy figure" for Diana, who was little better than a secretary. Halo only had three major women, all three of which died violent death (if we count Cortana). Mario games portray a frankly medieval attitude to women viz. Princess Peach, who is little better than an object to be repeatedly saved like some kind of sick and twisted "white knight" figure. Planescape: Torment portrayed one Anna as a ginger scottish demi-prostitute, and the Fall from Grace as a literal prostitute. Fallout three was basically a woman-killing simulator, as was Grand Theft Auto 4 (although Ballad of Gay Tony did admittedly portray men in a more realistic and less romanticised way)

    Duke Nukem seems to fall into this category. I do not know what the makers of this title were thinking of, but it is clear they want to create a stir and sell their silly game to young adolescent men, thus conditioning them into become misogynists and possibly rapists. I have been a victim of domestic violence, in fact I have previously been raped by my then-boyfriend (why do you think I became a feminine activist?), and since I know he used to play Doom, I know better than most that these games cause mind-rot.

    Thing is, it doesn't have to be this way. Some companies pay enormous amounts of attention to female equality. Bioware, for example, has an incredible array of strong, motivated female characters, like Miranda Lawson in Mass Effect 2 and Bethany and Morrigan in the Dragon Age series. These games also treat homosexual relationships in an incredibly more manner, and promote diversity and equality throughout. I make the effort to buy all Bioware games and DLCs for this precise reason. Alpha Protocol also featured some very good female characters, who seemed like real people, and if anything the men in that game were accurately portrayed as utter dicks. The same is true of Beyond Good and Evil. Half-Life 2 also did an incredible job of this, as Alyx is a character who is a true expression of all females.

    If gaming is to be taken seriously as a medium, it needs to reform its treatment of women.

  • Hermiod #492 11 months ago

    @Keza - Thank you for making your points without resorting to the usual crutches.

    I have seen female gamers treated abominably and that's something I won't defend. However, in general people in online games act poorly, I find women get a particular kind of abuse that's exclusive to them but they aren't alone in being treated badly. I got so fed up with it that I only play against my real life friends and put the privacy options on for everyone else.

    In general, however, I find most popular entertainment so utterly riddled with conscious or unconscious misandry that it's not going to be long before I have nothing to watch, play or listen to.

    Video games were kind of a last refuge but even those are getting worse.

  • smelly #493 11 months ago

    So slapping a woman on the bum = bad.

    Blowing a innocent bystanders head off with a shot gun = fine.


    .. And we wonder why society is a mess?

  • RoOhDaMite #494 11 months ago

    The thing is this: IT IS A GAME.

    And you play it for the sake of playing. Just remember good old kindergarden times, fooling around in your made up fantasy worlds. Have you never played some games where you have to catch someone and then bring him somewhere pretending to be a pirate/outlaw/policeman. And your friend would aggree to play his role no matter being the inferior character over whom you dominate during this particular game. Both parties enjoy the fantasy of playing a particular role and it is obvious to anyone that it is just a game and noone really gets hurt.

    So here we are now, having this endless discussion about a game that obviously is not forced upon anyone. Don't like it? Don't play it!
    Being dominated in a fictional setting is at its best entertaining, at its worst boring but where exactly it leads to behavioral issues is a mystery to me.

  • Hermiod #495 11 months ago

    @Emeline Pankhurst - Did you read the comments here at all?

    The portrayal of women in the Halo games has already been discussed.

    Thousands of games portray men as expendable cannon fodder whose lives do not matter. I'm not going to blame games for that as we are all conditioned from birth to devalue the lives of men.

    This particular game shows all of Earth's men being turned in to Pigs. Do you REALLY think it's women who should be offended?

  • Ryuken #496 11 months ago

    It's nothing new but in this day and age should a game with this mentality be given free reign. A point being made in the article is that we should have moved on or grown up by now.

    Adult folks liked DN3D back in the day as well with its strippers. It's "just" that silly.If anything, Rob writes his article about the games business being way too sexist basing his argument on an unreleased game which entire point is to make things look übermacho at all times. How on earth could he have missed this when DNF has been in development for so long now? It would have been better to single out the voluminous boobs in DA2/DS3 for example which are just as cheap (if not even cheaper) as they come from games which are supposed to be very serious and "proper".
    Edited by 1 at 28/03/11 @ 18:07

  • charming_fox #497 11 months ago

    Damn straight. This Fahey chap was talking complete rubbish, and getting paid for it!

  • PlugMonkey #498 11 months ago

    @ linea

    "Is 'abducted' not an appropriate word to use for a game mode where you grab a woman, put her over your shoulder, and run off with her to your base?

    Not sure what word *is* appropriate..."

    lol. It could be appropriate, depending on the context. Or, how about "piggy back race"? Couldn't that be every bit as appropriate as "abduction"?

    It's a context that you don't know exists in the game. Is it an abduction or a piggy back race? Or what point in between?

    You call it an abduction, and so the "spank" becomes a violent subduing of a "victim". And suddenly: Oh my! The humanity!

    Or she could be a giggling sorority girl, engaged in a light hearted fratboy prank, and then all of a sudden it stops being an abduction and becomes a slightly cheeky, silly game with absolutely sweet bugger all to do with domestic violence. Which is, quite frankly, an incredible leap to make. It really is right up there with Fox News getting from "Bulletstorm" to "rape".

    "Light hearted" and "silly" tend to be quite high up on the list when it comes to Duke Nukem. If this game comes out and there is anything even remotely threatening about this game mode, I will eat my head.

  • coomber #499 11 months ago

    [link url=http://www.computerandvideogames.com/295721/n ews/its-fox-news-vs-duke-nukem-media-outlet-attacks-gearbox- over-capture-the-babe/
    ]http://ww w.computerandvideogames.com/295...[/link]

    The circle is complete, Padawan Fahey....

    On a more serious note, I just read Tom's response. He's got to be having a laugh.

    we are no fans of people judging games without playing them, but...

    ...but we're going to do it anyway. That's the thing about ethics - they do tend to get in the way don't they?

    .. I do think it is fair to judge the way games are marketed. So, below is the exact wording about Capture the Babe from the Official Xbox Magazine article:......Neither 2K nor Gearbox wrote the copy

    Judging it on the marketing is not much better. But you haven't even done that - you have judged it on the second-hand opinions of other journalists. You even state yourself, as I have quoted, that Gearbox didn't write that. So how are you judging it on its marketing?

    However, there are plenty of other reasonable perspectives on this – several of which you can find elsewhere in this comments thread – and if you hold one of them then of course we are not saying you are a massive sexist.

    No, you're calling us misogynistic, white, middle-class cunts if I remember correctly.

    doing a print exclusive where Capture the Babe was likely to be acknowledged rather than investigated was always going to lead to Chinese whispers.

    So your third-hand guesswork is justified because someone else got an exclusive. Not sure I buy that.

    Edit: typo(s)
    Edited by 2 at 28/03/11 @ 21:22

  • Sevens #500 11 months ago

    EmmelinePankhurst:

    "Duke Nukem seems to fall into this category. I do not know what the makers of this title were thinking of, but it is clear they want to create a stir and sell their silly game to young adolescent men, thus conditioning them into become misogynists and possibly rapists."

    Hehe. Now that's funny.


    "If gaming is to be taken seriously as a medium, it needs to reform its treatment of women."

    Nah, that is - should be - just a side effect. Deeper, more complex characters (irrespective of gender) - yeah, that'd be nice. But that doesn't mean satire, comedy, unrealistic elements and stereotypes need to go. Quite the opposite. A broad range of diverse types of games and concepts should be available. "Political correctness" is oftentimes overrated/-emphasized. By the way, there should also be (explicit) sex scenes (naturally not in every game).


    "Mario games portray a frankly medieval attitude to women viz. Princess Peach, who is little better than an object to be repeatedly saved like some kind of sick and twisted "white knight" figure."

    Oh my god! (Female god, probably.)


    P.S.:

    Well written, Keza/Kelly.
    Edited by 1 at 28/03/11 @ 20:06

  • DrStrangelove #501 11 months ago

    I wondered what all that comments about the C-word are about. Now I have read the Twitter message.

    Previously, I felt the need to defend Fahey from what I perceived as overly furious attacks. Everyone has the right to utter his (wrong) opinion, right? But now I want to step back, Fahey is acting like a bloody douche, really.

    I wonder, how can you raise your voice against sexism and for women's rights or assumedly hurt feelings, and then use the C-word? My female friends aren't easily offended, but they do take offense by the use of that word. It doesn't get much more derogatory than that.

    Fahey really needs to get his shit straight.

  • jack24 #502 11 months ago

    Enjoyed your article Keza, was refreshingly level headed despite this OTT shitestorm of a thread

  • man.the.king #503 11 months ago

    @Fozzie_bear

    "Can someone tell me where the fuck being white has anything to with this? Is everyone who has posted an opinion here white? Would it matter if they were?"

    Nope not everybody disagreeing with Rob is white, and it indeed should not matter if they were - I'm an Asian Indian who has happened to settle in the US, and I think Rob is off his rocker for posting this ill-advised tripe.

  • man.the.king #504 11 months ago

    @toastmodernist

    "sometimes reading the comments of my fellow peers makes me want to jam a screwdriver deep into my eye socket. "

    Please don't let us stop you.

  • zubnut #505 11 months ago

    Come on EG: tell us what you really think about rob's cnuts comment, or, should your complete silence on that point lead us to conclude that you share his opinion?

  • aufi #506 11 months ago

    Keza's article is a good read and a gentle introduction to what woman gamers experience on a regular basis. while it's tempting to act all conciliatory and reasonable, lauding articles like this as striking an appropriate middle ground between a polarized audience blah blah blah, unfortunately for some of the above female gaming demographic--myself included--and even some men, it's an exercise in futility at this point. personally, i don't need the halo points.

    the fact is even without the contemptible bit of "CTB" gameplay, marketing for DNF has already found acceptable the use of cute, schoolgirl-type twins administering whats heavily intimated to be submissive, wide-and-watery-eyed sexual acts to the protagonist. Gearbox and co have made their position vis-a-vis DNF and the audience they're targeting quite clear.

    you are mouthbreathers. droolers, morons, dolts and dummies. accept it and learn to live with it. i'm talking down to you now, from my position of superiority on whatever disparaging cliche/directional/political/sexist locution you'd care to employ and yes, it really is that simple.

    my only question is: do the makers of this game feel warm gleeful feelings as they shovel this fairly effortless sort of chaff out in the zeitgeist? or do some of them develop a creeping agitation, like John McCain did at one of his own campaign rallies, both at his own running mate and the crowd of rubes to whom he's appealing for votes?

  • Hermiod #507 11 months ago

    Unfortunately, while Keza's article was well written it appears to have brought a few people out of the woodwork who seem to want to disrupt what has been a relatively friendly (Fahey's Twitter comments aside) discussion.

    @aufi - Please go and learn what being sexually submissive actually means and learn that it is not the bad thing you make it out to be. Giving someone a blow job does not count.

    The fact that you felt the need to identify yourself as a woman also suggests that you think your opinions are more important, and the opinions of men are less important, as a result.

  • aufi #508 11 months ago

    @ Hermiod.

    that fact you can leap tall buildings of logic in single disingenuous bounds does not make your assessment of my post or motivations for whatever revelations therein any more correct than your assertion of understanding sexuality, submissiveness or any combination thereof, better than i.

    really, it just goes to show how thin your veneer of purported civility actually is.
    Edited by 1 at 29/03/11 @ 07:03

  • Hermiod #509 11 months ago

    @aufi - In the words of a famous female television character, "I did not leap, I took a small step and there conclusions were".

    You did feel the need to establish your gender, as if that makes your opinions more important, otherwise why even mention it? Who cares that you're female? What difference does it make?

    That's what I've been saying all along. This game depicts men in a hell of a lot worse light and yet all people can find to bitch and moan about is one multiplayer mode. This game amongst thousands of others depicts men as expendable and worthless, but that's okay because it also allows you to spank a woman's backside which is much, much worse, isn't it?

  • aufi #510 11 months ago

    @ Hermiod.

    the fact you feel the need to repeat my gender and presuppose any specific meaning to its mentioning sort of undermines your own point. i didn't attach any particular weight to it. it was merely a statement of standpoint, of the view from where i'm sitting.

    in fact, it kind of seems your repetition of it is designed to try and make me uncomfortable for mentioning it at all. perhaps even using it as a sort of club to perversely, make it seem LESS relevant than it otherwise would be. is it an underhanded tactic to mention ones gender? this after calling a bunch of people morons, even!

    i wonder, if i instead said i'm a man, would you reach the same conclusion? if i said i'm a woman angry at all the men dying in games (which I sort of am, by the way; OTT violence against people for the sake of shits and giggles object of concern, subject for another time) would you feel the need to drag out the point and imply leveraging some sort of advantage out of it? would you see it but support it, even?

    oo! i can attach convenient suppositions to things people say too!

    Edited by 1 at 29/03/11 @ 07:59

  • PlugMonkey #511 11 months ago

    oo! i can attach convenient suppositions to things people say too!

    I know. That was pretty much your entry point into the argument. Presupposition followed by condescension. If you actually had a point to make, it was lost behind your overwhelming sense of superiority.

  • Hermiod #512 11 months ago

    @aufi - Unfortunately, while you and other women may very well be offended by the far greater sexism in games and in entertainment as a whole, I do not see evidence of that whenever these discussions come up.

    Your statement of your gender coupled with the fact that we are all focusing on a minor issue that is supposedly offensive towards women speaks to the gynocentrism of so many of these discussions.

    We never get to have a grown up discussion on the portrayal of gender in entertainment because somebody is always taking offence to one person in one game receiving a blow job or slapping a woman on the backside. Then we stop talking about it until the next time somebody does something women don't like.

    My issue with you or anyone else feeling the need to state that you're female, and with other men who have asked what Eurogamer's female writers think, is not I think their opinions aren't valid, of course they are, it's that too many people think that sexism is something that only affects women.

  • aufi #513 11 months ago

    @ PlugMonkey

    hi. my entry point perfectly suited the context and mood of this comments thread and the article that spawned it (though i freely admit i agree with the article and the views of the author). it probably fits your reasons for wading in, as it certainly does my other interlocutor.

    the difference is, i've chosen to recognize a dung heap for a dung heap, and added more dung to the heap. the can of air freshener some choose to wield instead won't make a lick of difference.

    also, points are overrated.

    @ Hermiod.

    you could say the reason we can't ever have mature discussions about this sort of thing is because someone's always looking to get reactionary and bemoan the state of PC gone mad and oh i'm so tired of being a poor maligned straight white male!

    if "reverse" sexism and apparent androcide is so meaningful and large an issue then yes, by all means, discuss! complain! i'll be there too, if i agree with you. maybe. i'll also be the first to look oddly at the first person who brings to this discussion on male marginalization/idealization some oddly-placed denigration of the topic at hand by pointing out that the same thing happens to women. oh, and condemns anyone who points out they're white and male.

    can we get back to being passive aggressive now, please?

    Edited by 1 at 29/03/11 @ 08:34

  • Sodding_Gamer #514 11 months ago

    I agree, a virtual slap on a womans arse is just too far.

    Now please excuse me, I must dash off, I'm in the middle of a GTA game and this whore Ive just shagged isn't getting away without me knocking my money back out of her with a baseball bat . . .

    Fucking well said mate. Sums it all up really. Plus all my ex's and girls that are just friends of mine, actually like GTA the most. And enjoy running people over more than I ever did.

    Next article: Run Down

    Women pedestrians should be taken out of GTA as I think its causing other women who play GTA to kill other girls because of pure jealousy.

    Rob Fahey your a twunt!!!!!!!!! Either that or your a tranny.

  • Hermiod #515 11 months ago

    @aufi - See post 501. See where I used the term "crutches"? The whole "white male heterosexual" thing is one of them. I make no point about anyone's sexuality or race. This isn't about either of those things. It's all too easy to portray anyone who gives a damn about how men are treated in society as only caring about their own particular ethnic group.

    There won't be any "PC gone mad!" comments if articles like this don't raise this sort of trivial crap as evidence of sexism in gaming in the first place. In a week's time this will all be forgotten about until the next time some game does something equally trivial to offend the womenfolk.

  • paganarh #516 11 months ago

    Probably this has been said here before but there's just too many comments to read through, so:

    Person who takes anything in Duke Nukem seriously is a bit silly. Duke is a sexist pig, everybody knows it. So he enables to do something that sexist pig does? Will it make everybody who plays Duke a sexist pig? Nope.
    Games are there to do stuff that we can't do in real life, to be someone that we aren't. Slapping the bottom of a girl while being a gun-toting, low IQ mountain of steroid-filled flesh who spews oneliners? Hell yes!

  • Hermiod #517 11 months ago

    @paganarh - It just happens to be Duke this time. If and when Catherine gets a UK release we'll do this all over again.

    I've seen people complain about everything from Marvel vs. Capcom 3 because She-Hulk is in the game (her breasts are too big, apparently) to Modern Warfare 2 because you can't play as a woman (said without a hint of irony).

  • Optimas #518 11 months ago

    The best way to change the industry is to vote with your wallet, game comapinies/publishers will stop making games that won't give profit. It's a slippery slope when you start to censor and remove anything that offends one group or another.

  • Hermiod #519 11 months ago

    @Optimas - I have and still do vote with my wallet and with my time. My television viewing is down to a couple of hours a week and I'm spending a hell of a lot less on DVDs in the last couple of years.

    I'm done consuming any form of entertainment rife with pointless male bashing. And yes, I'm saying that as the kind of white, heterosexual male with all of my evil privileged disposable income that the games industry is supposedly dependent upon.

  • PlugMonkey #520 11 months ago

    @ aufi

    Your comment met the lowest common denominator of this thread. If that was your aim, you have succeeded admirably. Whereas some of us are happy to "add dung to the dung heap", others try to rise above it. My can of air freshener may be ineffective, but wield it I must, lest I sink to the level of the trolls from either side of the argument.

    Points are the only thing of importance in a debate. That's what you debate on. Everything else is pointless verbiage.

  • RoOhDaMite #521 11 months ago

    Equality, huh? How about giving us all the equal right to be different.
    There is a little duke in all of us (even the women), you may call him your masculine half. And because he is portrayed completely over the top, you can make fun out of this (your) masculine side. It allows you to dissociate yourself from it. And finally accept it as a part of your personality.
    Trying to deny it will lead to a disturbed relationship towards yourself and the people around you.
    Abstinence as well as psychological/physiological oppression is what is causing abnormal sexual behavior, not a videogame.
    Edited by 3 at 29/03/11 @ 13:48

  • Desheep #522 11 months ago

    I dunno wut yer problem is, fellas. I only wishd ah cud slap dem gurlies hardur hyuk hyuk.

  • LordHogFred #523 11 months ago

    Ok I normally don't even rise to this sort of crap but seriously.
    Just a couple of things to completely nullify your entire argument here:

    "The slaughter of thousands by an improbable super-soldier is pretty blatantly within the realms of utter fantasy."
    This is just stupid. At no point in CoD is Soap ever remotely hinted at being a super soldier. I am assuming that this is what you are attempting to try and make a comparison to considering that it was said just after the Penny-Arcade reference. So actually this is just wrong.

    "Slapping women? That's something which, sadly, happens every day in countless households around the world."
    Just to let you know, thousands of people are gunned down in wars around the world every day. But this happens at a distance to our own lives which makes it perfectly ok.

    Have you actually spoken to any women who are genuinely outraged and offended by this or are you just one of these people who sees something and thinks that people should be offended by it? Yes I'm perfectly aware that there are many women that play mainstream video games now. However, women that play these games are very aware of how video games work. To imply that the games industry should change it's overall direction purely because the audience has expanded is just moronic. The audience has expanded because people enjoy and appreciate what the industry is like. It truly is far more disrespectful for you to assume that all women are, or should be, offended by such things.

    I could go on but I see no need. You entire argument is filled with flaws and assumptions that just make you look ignorant and naive.

  • Purps72 #524 11 months ago

    When are people in this world going to calm down, open their eyes and discover that there is such a thing as humour, it's great, it make you laugh, lightens your heart and helps drown out the stress of day to day life. DNF is humour, there is no hidden meaning, no mass intention to corrupt millions into domestic violence, it's just a big joke, in the same style as every other Duke game before it. If I took offence as quickly as it appears I should, then next time one of my female friends states that all men can't multitask and are useless, should I stand up, give her a lecture about sexism and label her, or should I just laugh it off for the tounge in cheek, off the cuff statement it is.

  • rudedudejude #525 11 months ago

    This dude reads the daily mail far too much.

    Maybe he should write some articles for them, I'm sure littlejohn could do with a hand.

  • AhrimaaN #526 11 months ago

    Meh. Change the model and voiceover into a guy (or better yet randomly make it one or the other half the time...) and I'll be just as happy. Any excuse to beat the shit out of an off the hook victim is fine by me, whether or not they have ovaries or not...

    Problem/outrage solved no?

  • slowbots #527 11 months ago

    Did the first Duke Nuke´em turn hoards of young males into murderous rapists? No

    Will this game do? No

    Is this game any worse than the old one? No

    What´s the shitt storm for? Publicity

    Give the PR team a raise and release the game already.

  • coolbritannia #528 11 months ago

    If anyone's still reading, my tweet timeline with rob:

    @robfahey [link url=http://seanmalstro m.wordpress.com/
    ]http://seanmalstro m.wordpress.com/
    [/link]

    @Cool_Britannia Disappointing! He keeps alluding to some Dark Personal Problem that drove me to write the column, but never identifies it :(

    @robfahey given that Joystiq have clarified there is no slapping in the face, it's a 'reassuring bum slap', do you now think diffferently?

    @Cool_Britannia No - there was never a suggestion of face-slapping in the first place, so I dunno why Joystiq needed to "confirm" this.

    @robfahey thanks for the response. Do you regret calling the EG readership 'cunts'? We're quite offended by that remark.

    @Cool_Britannia Aw, poor babies! Of course, that's not actually what I said - I said that over-privileged moaning white guys are cunts.

    @Cool_Britannia Some of EG's readership may fall into that bracket. That's not the same as saying "the EG readership are cunts".

    @Cool_Britannia But then anything I say, here or in the article, will have been twisted beyond recognition in the comments clusterfuck :)

    @robfahey still, an apology would probably go a long way to repairing damage done? It's easy to assume you meant everyone from the tweet.

    @Cool_Britannia Ha, are you serious? Not getting drawn into "apologising" for people's thin skins or failure to read comments in context.

    @robfahey well as I disagree with you, does that make me a white male middle class cunt? Seems harsh. :0-)

    @Cool_Britannia Do you disagree purely on the basis that "it would be okay if you were doing it to a man!"?

    @robfahey no, I disagree because surrounded by strippers, statues of strippers, aliens with 3 tits, etc, 'spanking a babe' has context.

    @robfahey likewise, the aim of the game is to 'rescue' babes from aliens, so chasing/catching babes multiplayer also has context.

    I'm keeping it polite, but Robs last comment shows a complete inability to see any point of view other than his own. He even makes his own conclusions as to my motives, which I find the mark of a poor journalist.

  • Raiftel #529 11 months ago

    Considering your previous comments about an apology being humiliating it seems a little odious that you're trying to worm an apology out of him. Essentially if he apologises you win because he's humiliated, if he doesn't he's a dick for not apologising.

  • coolbritannia #530 11 months ago

    Raiftel, I think I may be the only person here who's actually sought Rob out to politely tell him what I think. If you can find fault with that, fair play, but personally I think my actions are commendable, and as much as I didn't like his piece and subsequent 'cunting' of the EG community, Rob having the good grace to reply to a nobody on a public forum is also commendable.

    I've never actually groped a stranger in my life, yet I'd love to play this game mode. My actions and thoughts are not predictable to strangers, my motives are complex. My defence of a game does not make me a wife beater, or remotely sexist. My desire to converse with someone I intensely disagree with is not an attempt to humiliate him, it's to try and gain a mutual understanding.

    See, I'm a human being, I'm hard to pigeon hole. A notion both you, and Rob's article, fail to grasp.

  • charming_fox #531 11 months ago

    thanks Coolbrittannia, you're a better journalist already than Fahey, who is a white middle-call cunt to me

  • Sodding_Gamer #532 11 months ago

    Nice one Coolbritannia.

    EG should hire you as your IQ is clearly a lot higher than this ridiculously over opinionated tw@ who wrote the article.

  • fragpig #533 11 months ago

    Really enjoying this thread. I can't help feel Rob Fahey is living in a metropolitan bubble with the rest of his like-minded friends who act with righteous indignance at any slight upon their politically correct world, of feigning outrage at the supposed/assumed hurt others might have at this aboration Duke Nukem, when in fact there may be none, and is truly out of step with what the majority feel. And what do the majority feel, maybe that DNF is tongue in cheek, the developers know it is wrong to hit women, but they poke their tongue out at it, make fun of all those serious thick-necked space marines. Duke Nukem is in character and as such it is something he would do, he is a parady...and i'm looking forward to playing it.

    It kind of reminds me of Airplane the movie where they all get up to slap that hysterical woman...oh the vileness of it to make fun of such a thing!

    Face it Fahey, DNF is a pisstake on the musclebound conventional video game hero, he ridicules the stereotype. It does not say this is acceptable behaviour. Your one dimensional take on the subject and blinkered thinking means you missed the parody and made a fool out of yourself.

  • coolbritannia #534 11 months ago

    EG, give us a job :0-)

  • DiamondIce #535 11 months ago

    @kelly's_h

    Games are something I want to play with my friends only, girls I know just aren't interested in the games we play, and rightly so. I still like to think that there are man stuff and then there are woman stuff, and never the two shall meet. I'm probably a neanderthal.

    Rightly so? I like games and sport (particularly cricket). I need to buy myself some new genitalia I guess.

  • DiamondIce #536 11 months ago

    @kelly's_h

    Fair enough. The way you said rightly so just sounded a bit wrong.

    I've played games for years (since the Atari 2600) and have always been drawn to the more action-type stuff. I don't shave my head and I am not like Jack out of Mass Effect 2. I better just shut up, I think.
    Edited by 1 at 31/03/11 @ 12:05

  • _tangent #537 11 months ago

    If i was to take seriously the way the game's main character stereotypes men, wouldn't i find it equally offensive? Is it ok to portray men as mindless, violent, sexist thugs, whilst simultaneously not ok to present women as hot-bodied bimbos? Though obviously none of us have played the game it seems to me that it takes these sexual stereotypes, cariacatures them, then uses them as a backdrop for a lot of bad-taste jokes, which - in the vein of family guy and a lot of other modern comedy - is funny because we know it's naughty/bad/we shouldn't laugh, and we know not to take it seriously. It is satirical comedy, not social commentary.

    Is it not legitimate for someone to want to make a game (or a movie or tv series) featuring a mysoginistic character? As consumers, should we always be forced to suffer clumsy, patronising story arcs which serve merely as an excuse to subject said character to the consequences of his bad attitude, just to make sure we all understand sexism is bad? Do we really need to be told that? Do we really want our entertainment media to be so transparantly condesending and unsubtle?

    Back in the 1900s, Rob, when sexism really was rife in society, they didn't have jokes of the sort that Duke Nukem is replete with. It wasn't FUNNY to cariacature a woman as a bimbo; it was FUNNY to suggest she wasn't. It was FUNNY if a woman expressed a political opinion, or claimed she could work as a car mechanic, or spoke when not spoken to at the dinner table. Why? Because it's only FUNNY to make a joke about a woman being a bimbo, if you DON'T already think ALL WOMEN are bimbos, Rob! True sexism is not making a joke about a hot blonde woman being dumb. True sexism, is ASSUMING a hot blonde woman is dumb, simply because she's a woman, who's hot and blonde.
    Edited by 1 at 31/03/11 @ 17:50

  • Gearskin #538 11 months ago

    I got a reply from GirlGamer.com that reads...

    "Personally, I think it's hilarious and works for Duke. If you threw "Capture the Babe" in Halo, it just wouldn't work"

    ... So... no need to jump to the defence of the fairer sex, eh?

  • TexMurphy01 #539 11 months ago

    So we have...

    "I can sympathise with that to some extent, even if it is a bit passive aggressive..."

    Actually, that's pretty passive aggressive. Also you really should take a stand on the Twitter comments.

  • dragulagb #540 9 months ago

    i just hate how people all take games too seriously, they are GAMES yet people some how thing they control life, ive played all GTA games, both saints row games and various clone types of the genre, but ive yet to become a pimp, commit murder, steal a car, deal drugs or fly with a jet pack over illegal airspace, if your a moron and do stuff that happen in games then well your just a moron weather you played a game or not your still that moron